All Partial Evil: part II
by ButNothing
Summary: AU, Wolverine, OC: Chapter 13: 'I love the combat and I love to battle. It's the reason I live for. It's a cliche to put it like this, I know, but it's the most alive I ever feel.' He swallowed. His voice was husky. 'It's always in my mind. Even when I'm not thinking about it and I have to be careful with it. It so easy to start to measure everything against it.'
1. 7: The Miens

**NOTE:** This is a rewritten version of the 7th chapter. Not all new, but all improved. The ending has changed dramatically, so you really need to read it again.

* * *

**7. The Miens**

_The war hound lopes through tall late-summer grass. The grass parts in front of it and closes behind it, and the prairie remains the same, unchanged, with no signs left of the hound's passage. _

_I fly high above the land, unseen, riding the rising currents. I watch the wind move across the landscape, and the grass waves, yielding, rising like a soft, yellow-green ocean. The wind is soundless, but the grass whispers and sighs as the wind moves through it. The song of grass hides the sound of the running dog, and all I see is its black back plowing through the sea of green._

* * *

Logan put the last fork-full of the blueberry pie into his mouth, chewed squeezing the filling against the roof of his mouth with his tongue, then swallowed and licked his lips. He pushed the plate slightly away and grabbed the half full cup of coffee by wrapping his fingers around the stoneware. He took a sip, grunted happily, leaned back against the booth's chestnut backrest and looked out through the diner's window. 

There she was, Grace, standing on the other side of the street, talking with a well-built man in a black leather biker's jacket.

Her hair was longer than it had been six years ago. Not significantly so, but longer nevertheless. She wore pale olive-green cargo pants and an old navy blue jacket, the same one she had had when she had found him in the forest.

_Six years and she hasn't changed,_ Logan thought as he watched them discuss something. _More than six years and that bitch is still the same._

The man looked at his watch and said something to Grace. She looked at hers, agreed and put her hands in her jacket pockets. He nodded, said something in addition and leaned forward to hold her face with his hands and kissed her. She laughed and he left. She shouted something after him and he turned, waved his hand and went on. She waved back, put her hand back in the pocket and prepared to cross the road.

_She's comin' here._

She kept her eye on the traffic, walked and then jogged the last few steps to make way to a dark green Ford. Her hands never left the pockets.

Logan turned away and drained his coffee. He laid the cup down.

_I should be gone already._

In the corner of his eye he saw her open the door and walk to the counter. He heard her order an ice-tea and a beef sandwich.

He didn't smell them, but then again: he had told her about the scent.

Logan let his eyes wander across the room. It was quiet: well past the breakfast, an hour or so to go before the lunch. There was a middle-aged couple at the back of the diner eating an early lunch and talking about a mortgage; a young woman by the window reading a fat, large format hard-cover book, making occasional notes in the margins and eating her soup when she remembered; three postal workers in the middle of the room laughing loudly and drinking coffee; and Grace by the counter. He had been there for roughly half an hour and only the student with her book had arrived after him.

And now Grace.

Life had been relatively quiet for Logan after he had left Grace's. Nobody had come after him, no-one, and it had felt strange at first. He had been so used to being on his toes all the time, to the constant worrying about everything and everyone, and he had forgotten the incessant, ever-present fear. He had remembered the fear only after he had realized that he had been left alone and that had been the most fearsome thing of all. It had scared the shit out of him. It had felt as though all the forgotten fear had struck him all at once and he had panicked, completely. How can you forget that you are afraid?

He had been far up north, driving on a seldom used forest road on his way to the next nameless town, when the ocean of fear had claimed him. He had stopped the truck on the spot, had run out into the wilderness leaving the engine running and the door wide open. He had run for his life, or so he had believed, and had stopped only when his body had given up on him and he had fallen to the ground. He had crawled on as fast as he could for awhile, using the claws to help pull himself further, but then he had felt sick and had vomited, violently.

The utter exhaustion had won over the panic. Things had cleared up and he had returned to the car, skulking and legs trembling. The engine had run out of gas, but otherwise things had been as he had left them.

The anger had taken over after that. The fear had vanished and he had been filled with cold rage against all and everything, especially against them. And her, though sometimes he briefly missed her - and the sword.

Now she was there, sitting on a high stool, back partly turned towards him. She chatted idly with the waiter while he put the ice-cubes into a tall glass and poured ice-tea over them. He cut the sandwich in half when it arrived from the kitchen and provided the preferred choice of small, complimentary dessert to go along with it. She had chosen a ripe Golden Delicious- apple; Logan could catch its scent all the way across the room. She put the apple into her pocket, took the plate and the glass, turned around to find a place to sit at and saw him.

She smiled with surprise; he tried to hold on to a blank expression.

_I was wrong_, Logan thought as he watched her sit down at his table, _ she has changed._

Grace sat there, in front of him, smiling (contently, he thought). She had laid the ice-tea down on the table and her hand was still holding the sweating glass loosely. The waiter did his round around the diner asking if everybody was okay, and he filled up Logan's cup even though he didn't reply. Grace smiled at the waiter and lifted her brow apologetically.

"So," she said after the waiter was gone, "How are you? Are the dreams still keeping you company at night?"

Logan offered no answer. He drank a mouth-full from the cup discarding the bitter, poignant taste of black coffee on his palate. She seemed to be reading something into it, but didn't comment on it. She took a bite of her sandwich and chewed thoughtfully.

"Did you get away okay?" she asked after the third bite.

Logan put his hands under the table. A passing car caught his eye and he followed the white van until it turned left at the end of the block.

She still smelled of earth and horses.

"Yeah, sure," he said and turned back to face her. She smiled as she ate.

"How has it been since then? Any trouble from - them?"

Logan leaned forward until his upper arms touched the table's edge.

"No. None."

"Really? None at all?"

Logan frowned. He couldn't decide wether her surprise was genuine or not.

"You heard me just fine, darlin'."

She stared at him for a while.

"Aye, I guess I did." She finished the sandwich and wiped her mouth with a yellow napkin. The postal workers got up, payed and left. The couple at the back was getting ready to go.

"Is everything alright?" she asked quietly. Her concern smelled genuine, but he wasn't willing to trust his senses. Not this time.

"Who's he?"

She frowned questioningly.

"The biker across the street."

She smiled understanding. "He's Nick, Nick Fury."

"Who's he to you? A friend, a boyfriend, a husband?" Logan paused to lift an eyebrow mockingly. "A lover?"

Grace laughed softly, but turned then serious and looked out at the steadily growing traffic. The ephemeral scents of love, friendship and lust drifted across the table in succession.

"We go back a long way, Nick and I," she said. "A long way." She looked at her hands on the table and then at him. "We are friends, marrows and we used to be more - from time to time." Her stance mirrored the melancholy of her words.

Logan granted himself a smirking smile. "Oh, I see."

She emptied her glass and played with it.

"I never heard anything about it in the news," he noted. "How did you manage that, darlin'?"

"Did you really expect to hear about it?"

"Do you expect me to believe that you just left them lying around and took of?" He leaned over the table. "Come on, darlin', you can tell me. Where did you hide the bodies?" he whispered like a co-conspirator.

"I just took my stuff, loaded it on the horses and rode away. It's easy to disappear into the wilderness up there as you know."

"How brave of you to trust that they wouldn't make a fuss about it. Or stupid."

"I knew they wouldn't," she said, slightly aggravated.

"Oh you knew, darlin'? How come?"

"For fuck's sake, Logan. You knew that as well as I did or you wouldn't have agreed to leave before sorting out the mess." The couple with a mortgage gave her a disapproving look as they walked past on their way out.

"You for sure had one hell of a way to sort it out," he hissed at her. The woman of the couple turned to look at him at the door and he snarled at her. She fled out after her man.

Grace was squinting when he looked at her. Her scent had changed and he smelled danger.

"What do you mean, Logan?" she said carefully.

"I saw you and him," he nodded towards the street, " and the choppers and the doggies. I saw what you did, darlin'. I saw you."

Her pupils dilated and for the first time he smelled fear.

"So," he smiled baring his teeth, "the thing is, I can't figure out why you let me go."

Her eyes narrowed slightly.

"You are your own man, Logan. It was your choice to go."

He laughed briefly leaning back. "Yeah, right," he said when he was serious again, "sure it was." He pulled his right hand from under the the table and pointed his finger at her. "You've been playin' me all the way, but not any more." He laid his hand on the table.

Grace stared at his hand. The young woman slammed suddenly her book shut, collected her belongings hurriedly and stormed out. The sudden noise startled Logan and he winced.

"You know, Logan," Grace said quietly, "things aren't always what they seem to be."

Logan whipped his head around.

"No kiddin', darlin'." He scowled and moved his left hand on the table. He clenched his hands into fists, and the blades moved under the skin. He let the claws move forward, against the skin, and he watched as the points cut through. Light reflected from a window of a passing car, and sun danced on adamantium.

"I know what you did to me."

Grace met his gaze with puzzlement. The rage felt hot, enforcing, but it changed. Eventually he tipped his head forward and to the left to hide how he closed his eyes.

"I remember more now. The dreams are more clear and detailed," he said, with malice. His voice trembled. "I remember what you did to me. I remember. I never forgot."

"Logan, I swear it wasn't us."

His neck burned where her sword had cut him.

"Get up."

She remained sitting for few breaths, but then stood up. The smell of fear was gone.

* * *

Logan drove the truck into a vacant plot in the outskirts on the town. He seemed sullen; sad and  
angry all at once, but more determined than I had ever seen him be. He parked the car along a pile of rusted oil drums and turned off the engine. 

It was a fine day: blue skies with a touch of winter purple and a shadow of red in the maple leaves. His hands remained on the wheel as he sulked over what he had seen all those years ago. I turned away to watch how the tall withered grass yielded to the wind.

"Now what?" I asked eventually.

His jaw muscles rippled as he scowled.

"Now," he said as he turned towards me, "now you're gonna tell me everythin'."

I swallowed. "I can't. I'm sorry but I can't."

He laughed with darkness in his voice.

"I think you're missin' the point here, darlin'." He let go of the wheel and rested his right elbow on the seat's backrest. "I ain't askin', I'm just sayin' what will happen."

"And I'm saying I can't tell you, Logan, not everything."

"I'm sorry to hear that. I'd rather didn't."

"Logan, you can't touch me. You know what I can do if you touch me."

"I only need to touch you once."

I smiled: "I can't argue with that."

He looked me into the eye and smiled. "I knew you wouldn't."

I opened the door and got out, he didn't object. The wind smelled of cold and snow. I closed my eyes and let the air move through me.

Logan had got out too and was leaning against the truck's roof with arms crossed, chin on his forearm. There was a hint of contentment in his pose.

"But it's still a stalemate," I said.

He remained motionless for a moment. The wind picked up and ruffled his black mane gently. He pushed himself away from the truck and walked around it with a measured gait. He came to stand in front of me, crossed his arms again and leaned his back against the car.

"I suppose you're right," he said and squinted as he looked at me along his nose. "I really don't seem to have much leverage on you here."

"No, you don't."

Suddenly he smiled with uncharacteristic genuineness. I frowned before I could help myself.

"I tried so hard to scare you back then," he explained. "To really scare the living daylights out of you, but you were one fuckin' fearless bitch back then."

I laughed and he smiled again.

"All that hard work for nothin'. I never smelled fear on you." He sneered slightly." It really pissed me off, you know."

I nodded.

"So I thought I never would." He stood up, walked to me and stood still by my shoulder looking at the distance somewhere behind me. "But I did today," he almost growled, "and it felt so fuckin' good to smell you and to know that it was me who put that fear in you."

He circled around me.

"So maybe I do have some leverage on you." He leaned against the car again. "It just ain't what I thought it would be."

I shrugged my shoulders. "That really doesn't mean much here. I can't tell you everything. It's as simple as that."

"I know you didn't want me to see what you did with the corpses, Grace. I know you killed the RTO in the woods. I don't know how you managed that, but I smelled you on him."

The rough, coarse ray fish skin cut into my palm and I felt the weight of the sword in my hand - and on my soul.

"Aye, I did kill him," I said surprising us both with the dolorousness of my voice. I rubbed my palm against my thigh to scour the feeling away. The feeling persisted, and he looked at me tilting his head curiously. I smelled blood and I looked down at my hand to see how it shook. I clenched the hand into a fist hoping that the shaking would vanish, but it didn't. The air felt hot in my lungs, and the redness in the leaves and in the rust on the drums burned my eyes. I looked at him.

* * *

Grace reeked of fear. She rubbed her hand compulsively against her thigh, over and over again, hard. She looked at her palm, gasped and grasped the wrist with her left hand. Her fingers turned white as she squeezed the wrist as if to prevent something from spreading. She looked at him and he recognized the look in her eyes. 

Her fear infiltrated him.

"Grace?"

She sunk on her knees and began to scrape her palm against the ground. He smelled blood as the grass turned red under her hand. She whispered something, but he didn't catch the words.

"Grace?"

She didn't seem to hear him. Logan took a step closer and she finally lifted her head. He wasn't sure if the ground shuddered or not.

"The Earth won't take it, Logan. It won't take it away." Her eyes were dark and he doubted if she could truly see him.

He took another step towards her.

"It won't take what away?"

"The sword. I should never have used it."

_Sweet Mother of God. This ain't what I thought it would be._

_This is fuckin' better._

He glanced quickly around to see if they were alone, but he had chosen the location well. The pile of oil-drums hid them from the casual traffic and the wire-fence was fortified by bushes and high-grown grass. He crouched down on his haunches.

"Grace? Listen to me, Grace." She turned her head towards him.

"You have to tell me about the sword, Grace."

She smiled with sad eyes. "I can't. I've never..." She closed her eyes and frowned, thinking. Her scent changed, and Logan wondered if he had missed his opportunity.

"If I tell you about the sword," she said tentatively, "would it help to convince you, that it wasn't us who put the adamantium in you?"

"Would it explain everythin'?"

She opened her eyes.

"No."

He kneaded his clasped hands. Grace pried a scarf out of her pocket and wiped most of the blood and dirt away; the scrapes had began to heal. She leaned her left hand against the ground and prepared to stand up. He seized her sword hand with his left one, unfolded her fingers and ran his hand across her palm. She objected: he felt the tension in her muscles, but chose to ignore it.

"Tell me about the sword, Grace."

She twisted her hand gently and he let her go. She wrapped the stained, gray scarf around her hand.

"I wish I could tell you everything," she said intently. "You deserve to know."

"I ain't askin' for your pity," he said angrily.

"Don't. I..."

_She has changed._ He studied her features and found new lines around her eyes. _She was so fuckin' tough when we first met. Fearless._

_Or tired of life. Like I was - am_, he thought. A sarcastic grin flashed on his face.

_Somethin' has changed._

"Do you still want me to kill you?" she asked suddenly catching him slightly off balance.

_Do I?_

"Yeah."

_I do?_

He felt he had to elaborate: "I still have some unfinished business to take care of, but eventually - yes, I do."

She merely nodded. A flock of starlings flew past the plot swirling, changing shape in unison like a monstrous organism, chirping. She bent her head all the way back and looked up to the sky.

"Remember the sword I used when I almost beheaded you?" she said and lifted her head to see him.

"Yeah, the one in the lacquer box. The one with a name. " He glanced at the truck. "Shiokaze, right?"

"Aye, Sea-breeze," she said with softness he remembered. "But there's another one. Another sword." She leaned forward and onto her hands. Her breathing turned shallow, and he smelled the stench of fear in his nose. She looked at him again, grinned nervously and sat up straight.

"This one is nameless. Or maybe it had a name once, a long time ago when it was made. I don't know." She looked around searching for something he didn't see. The grass whispered as the wind moved through it and she extended her arm to feel the grass against her hand.

"This nameless sword," he said when she seemed lost, "Is it the one you used kill the soldiers?"

She hitched her head around and pushed herself a few inches away from him as if she had forgotten his presence. Logan lifted his hand and almost grabbed her by the shoulder. He remembered her ability and held still, arm stretched with open palm.

"Grace, I'm not... " He pulled the arm back. "Just relax, Grace, and tell me about the sword." He tried to sound as gentle as he possibly could and it surprised him.

She closed her eyes and breathed systematically for a moment. Her voice was calm when she spoke.

"There was a Japanese swordsmith once. A real master with skills beyond mere mortal's they said." She frowned briefly. "Muramasa I think it was. Yes, " she opened her eyes again, "Muramasa.

"He made beautiful blades, keen and balanced. Worth their price most people thought." She massaged her neck with her hand. "And his best swords will cut through everything, absolutely everything. It's said that's because the swords enjoy destruction, that they love the act of cutting itself."

Logan smiled sardonically: "So real magical swords then."

"Aye, you could say that."

He laughed and stood up. "This is genuine bullshit, Grace."

"No, the sharpness of the blades is just a result of craftsmanship, of skill and knowledge. There's nothing magical about that." She bit her lower lip. "The magic lies elsewhere."

He dropped down into a crouch on all fours, knuckles jammed against the ground.

"Bullshit, Grace, bullshit!" he growled at her face. At first she leaned back to make room for him, but then her expression changed.

"Give me your hand, Logan."

"What?"

"Oh, I think you heard me." She held her hand out demandingly . "Give me your hand, Logan."

He hesitated. He didn't want to give in or to appear to be afraid of her and he certainly wasn't about to mistake stupidity for curiosity. Suddenly she seized his hand by the wrist. He felt her enter his body and found himself unable to resist when she commanded his hand to open and pressed it against her chest.

"Don't laugh at my magic, Logan," she said softly with lethal sweetness in her voice. She smiled coyly as she studied his face and neck with her eyes. Her fingers around his wrist felt warm.

"Look, I'll show you what I mean. I'll show you real magic, Logan. Real magic." She lifted her left hand and pressed her palm against his chest. He wanted to pull back, but couldn't.

At first he felt nothing. He smelled her in his nose, the earth and horses; the autumn grass and the leaves; rusted iron of the drums; the truck and its leaking engine-oil. Nothing special about it, only he couldn't free himself from her.

_I ain't tryin' hard enough._

He blinked and he saw himself.

He didn't get it at first. He tried to turn back towards Grace, but nothing happened. All he saw was himself on his knees amongst grass, Grace's hand on his chest. He looked down and saw his own hand with fingers spread wide on her.

"Well hello there," she said with his mouth, but his face stayed motionless. "There's something I want you to see - Wolverine." She closed his eyes.

_Her eyes. I'm in her head._

It wasn't seeing, not as such. It was an odd mixture of all the senses. He could taste the bones - and see. He smelled the blood and felt its warmth on his forearms. The metal around his bones was more a flavour, a smoothness felt with his tongue and in his throat than an actual image in his eyes. It made him gag, but he couldn't since she didn't.

The body his mind remembered and believed still to be occupying began to tremble, but the body his senses perceived didn't. The heart was beating with a steady rhythm. The muscles were soft, relaxed.

She began to pull out of him. She backed up slowly, as if flying in reverse through a canyon of 1000 yards but with only a few feet of width. The walls of the canyon pressed on him and the old feeling of being cornered crept through from his lost memories.

The motion of breathing was hard. The rhythm was strange, not his, but hers, and he began to run out of air.

Somewhere in the crimson light the adamantium sang to him. Its steel-sleek voice whispered words of comfort and and rescue and safety into his ears, and the smooth touch of metal on his tongue tasted of sea and sugar. It had rescued him once. He knew it despite the lack of memory of it, but he knew it. He was certain of it. He remembered the song of adamantium and turned towards it. She resisted, but he fought it, somehow. Or maybe it was the song and the voice that fought her. He began to move forward again finding his own course through the canyon of flesh and bone and steel.

Around him the world of flesh blinked and it became dark. The scent and taste of his body remained in his mouth, but all else was pitch-black and he began to drift. The sensation of drifting turned into falling, and he fell down through the darkness feeling the ground closing fast on him. He tried to breath harder, but the air was thin. There was no wind on his skin, no sound of air rushing past his ears as he fell downward through darkness thicker than oil. He struggled to stop the falling, tried to swim to the surface like a drowning swimmer would struggle against a current. The lack of oxygen burned in his lungs, and the falling continued. He would have screamed, but there was no air to form the sound.

He opened his eyes _(My eyes, not hers, mine.)_ and threw his arms forward against the ground to brake off the fall. He was dizzy, groggy and the sensation of falling persisted. He fought to keep his eyes open and eventually the world around him returned to its relative normality. He spat out the blood from his mouth and a piece of his tongue to go along with it. He felt the wound with his finger, swallowed the remaining blood and the excess saliva that was building up in his throat and staggered up. The world swayed, then settled; his tongue hurt.

Another flock of starlings flew low past him. He crouched startled by the sudden noise of wings and almost fell. The chirping of the birds sounded mechanical in his ears and he grimaced with nauseous pain.

The flock passed and it was quiet again. Only the wind remained.

Grace had collapsed. Logan kneeled down beside her and flipped her around to her back. Her limbs followed the weight of her body with lifeless indifference, but there was a faint pulse inside her chest. He didn't have to concentrate to hear it, so it was okay enough.

He took her jacket off, sat down properly on the ground and searched the garment thoroughly. He checked the pockets and the lining, he ran his fingers along the seams twisting and bending the fabric until he was satisfied that it was only an old worn jacket with chafed cuffs and a missing button. He found a set of keys, the car keys, a wallet and a black notebook almost filled with writing and drawings but no pen.

There would be time to go through them later. He returned his attention to her.

He ran his hands over her quickly checking routinely all the obvious places. He expected to find nothing and was satisfied. The pen was in one of her trouser pockets.

Her hair was gathered into a ponytail, so he opened the clasp and ran his fingers through her hair. He unbuttoned her shirt, searched the seams, the collar, the cuffs and the hemline, did the same to her T-shirt and found nothing. He then pulled her shirts up past her breasts and pushed his finger under her bra. It was a sports bra with no wires under the cups so it was easy to decide there was nothing hidden in it. He pulled her over to her side and checked the backside. After that he let her fall back to her back.

He pulled her belt free from the trousers; there was nothing there. The belt itself was made of thick leather, probably cut from the centerline of the hide he thought. A bit long for her maybe, worn, but well cared for. The buckle was just a buckle.

He undid the button-fly on her trousers and pulled them down a bit to make room for his hands. He made sure there was nothing in the waistline or in the seams, and she had nothing taped to her inner thighs either. He found a small lump in her thigh, an inch or so below her groin, but it was somewhat soft and deformed: a tumor, maybe. He thought about it and then sniffed the skin hesitantly. It wasn't malign.

He considered cutting the soles of her boots open, but then decided that it would be paranoid in a wrong way. He did take the boots off though. Nothing.

He took the notebook and the wallet, stood up and walked to his truck. There he sat down on his haunches, back rested against the door of the car, elbows on his knees. (The long grass hid most of her from his view.) He stretched his arms a little and let them hang relaxed over his knees. He swung the notebook thoughtfully between his thumb and index finger and followed its arch with his eyes.

_She's my only lead._

He went through the notebook page by page. She had written most of the notes in English, but every now and again he came across pages and passages written in two other languages unknown to him. He read what he could, but it didn't add up to much. The pages were filled with a variety of observations: of birds, animals, seasons, landscapes, weather; minute details and large-scale summaries illustrated with ink drawings and occasional touches of colour. There were drawings of people (He found a picture of himself, but he didn't linger on it.) and of built environs. At one point she had used several pages to draw different kinds of cars.

Some of the notes were lists of things to do, places to go, addresses of shops, accommodation and companies, but nothing came across as interesting or covertly meaningful. She had made the first entry roughly a year ago, the last one was only a few days old.

The two foreign languages meant nothing to him. The more common of the two was short-worded, rough and full of consonants; the rearer-one (there were only five or six entries written in it) was composed of long words and strings of vowels and it reminded him of Japanese written in roman alphabet.

_What the hell did you expect?_

_A list of covert operations?_

_Names and code names of the agents involved?_

_A written confession, signed and stamped with a judge's approval?_

He let his back slide down along the door, crossed his arms on his knees and sulked for awhile with his chin on is forearm. He thought he could make out the profile of her body through the grass. He put the wallet and the notebook into the clove compartment and went back to her. The grass reached all the way up to his knees and the thin, climbing weeds amongst it hugged his legs like tendrils as he waded through it. She lay as he had left her: partly undressed, on her back, left hand open on her belly.

_I did kill her that time,_ he thought all of a sudden.

_I kill things._

_That's what I do._

_That's what I'm best at._

He decided to check her breathing and counted her exhales against the back of his hand. Her breathing was deep and strong, punctuated by several seconds of stillness after every outward breath. He let his hand touch her cheek and grazed the back his hand across her jaw and the side of her throat. He found the pulsating vein besides her windpipe and held still listening to the heartbeats with his fingers and his ears. He wondered if she could feel him on her. He stood up again. The grass billowed around her like green waves of a green ocean. An image of red waves caressing dead bodies on a black beach came to his mind. He caught a conjured smell of sulfur in his nose, but the image receded before it reached a state of full recollection.

_I have forgotten what it is to love_. There was a tight bundle of pain under his right shoulder plate.

_There's only death and pain in me. Death and pain and rage and hatred._

_It's what I am._

_Maybe it's all I am._

He kneeled down and pulled her shirts down proper. He covered her torso with the jacket and tucked its sides under her to keep her warm. The trousers were easier, but he left the belt off and stuffed it into his pocket instead. The boots, he decided, were not worth the trouble.

His hand got left resting on her thigh and he felt the growth through the garment. He didn't dare to look up to her face. He closed his eyes and filled his ears with the sound of the wind in the grass. The sound mutated into a rustling whisper in his mind; into a sound of countless round-grounded pebbles born of volcanic rock and years of wear rocked back and forth again and again by long, smooth waves. Waves stained red with blood of counted soldiers laying on their mouths in shallow water.

_You don't always get what you wish for, but sometimes you get lucky._

He stood up, grabbed her by her wrists and dragged her over to the oil drums. There he leaned her up against the stained drums into a sitting position and crouched down at her feet. The flock of starlings landed on the grass, withered with a shock of anticipation before shooting back up into the sky. He lifted her head up and moved it backwards until it rested against an edge of an oil drum.

_My turn._


	2. 8: The Distance

**Caveat lector - reader be aware. This chapter contains graphic violence and the rating should be taken in consideration.**

** Don't tell me I didn't warn you. **

* * *

**The Distance**

_She took his hand and placed her palm against his by sliding her hand upward from his wrist, across his palm, matching her fingers for each of his._

_"Your life is in you hands, you know."_

_"Literally, you mean?"_

_She laughed as he had meant for her to laugh._

_"Your life is in the actions carried out by your hands," she explained and pressed his palm against her cheek. He stroked her lower lip with his thumb._

_"So my actions define me."_

_"I suppose so. Yes."_

_He smiled wickedly. _

_"They say you can tell a lot about a fellow by the look of his hands," he said._

_She pulled back and looked at his palm. He pulled her closer and kissed her on the hollow just above her collarbone. She complied with a scent._

_Later, when she was gone and he was laying on his bed and staring at the ceiling, he lifted his hands and held them above his face. He had large hands, strong and heavy, but the skin on his palms was unblemished and soft. _

_He closed his fingers into fists, clenched heavily and counted his knuckles and the valleys between them. He flexed his wrists, and the claws moved under the skin like rigid snakes under a blanket of flesh._

My life is in my hands.

_He let the claws move back and unmade the fists, slowly, turning his hands around as his fingers unfolded. He studied the lines that run across his palms and mapped out the patterns that the lines drew on his skin._

Life simply passes through me and leaves no signs on the surface.

_He ran his hands across his face to prove them real._

But it's all in me, unseen, in hiding.

It'll all come out some day.

You'll see.

* * *

There seemed to be no limit to his patience. He found the paradox strangely amusing. Getting angry or being pissed off by something happened in an instance - daily. Sometimes it was a constant state of mind for days, and he would flee the society into solitude in wilderness. After a week or so of hunting and walking the tempest would pass and he would head back to people even though he couldn't understand why he returned. 

It had been hunting that had led to the discovery on patience. He could stalk for hours. Sometimes he followed an elk or a moose or even apack of wolves just for the fun of it, just because he could. He could wait seemingly endlessly for the right opportunity, not for just any opportunity, but for the right one, the one that actually would deliver. He assumed that was why he practically never failed.

Grace came around just after the sunset. He had kept an ear on her heartbeat and breathing and had noticed a change an hour before. He had been laying on the grass until then, counting the clouds, following their constant metamorphosis and wondering how immensely unfair it was that you couldn't walk on them. The change had brought him back and he had again crouched down at her feet. After that he had been thinking about hunting and game and how similar stalking game was to stalking people; there was the same satisfaction in them both. He knew normal folks would find his thoughts disturbing. Or disturbed. He wondered why he didn't.

She woke up slowly. He kept book of the signs as they appeared playing a game of anticipation against himself to see if he could guess what would happen next. He played this game often while watching people, and he assumed there was a link between it and hunting. But this was different, a new level.

Her left hand slid down the side of her thigh and fell softly to the grass, drawing aside the thick cotton shirt from which the bottom-most button was missing. It revealed the waistband of her trousers and a small patch of bare skin.

"Jesus Christ, Logan," she said unexpectedly. "Where the hell did that come from?"

He looked up at her and saw a sly smile on her face. He didn't answer. She shifted, pushed herself up to fit more comfortably against the oil-drums. He turned his head away to count the distance to his truck. At the corner of his eye he saw her look up at the clear blue sky shaded in a pink-orange hue. He smelled weakness and allowed himself a satisfied smile before turning back to her. She pushed herself further up into a higher sitting position. He stared at her legs as they tiredly dragged away from him. A tide of hatred rose in his spine.

_All I wanted was to get away._

"Logan?"

He lifted his head up sideways and rolled neck and shoulders to relieve the pain that had taken to inhabit the muscles just below his shoulder plates. The tension gave away with a soft snap, and the rejuvenated blood flow warmed his neck. The scar from her blade pulsated when the blood rushed past it. He looked at her.

"You just take it easy, darlin'."

She threw a quick glance up at the sky and pulled down the hem of her shirt. Her hand was pale and her fingers trembled just enough for him to take notice.

"I should get inside, Logan. I ain't feeling too good, you know."

He looked her in the eye and smiled openly. She wiped her brow with her palm and rubbed the hand dry against her thigh.

"Can't you heal yourself?"

She took a look at the sky again. "Your adamantium fucked up my system."

The rage flared somewhere. He fought the rage. He didn't want to lose it. Not quite yet. Her whole body shivered now. He sensed adrenalin.

She pulled her legs in. "You're right. I'm sorry. It's not your adamantium."

He looked at his hands and flexed his fingers savouring the feeling of strength in them.

"Speaking of which," he said," you never finished your story about the sword."

"I can't tell it now. I need to get inside. I need to eat." There was a tinge of despondency in her voice. He more felt than heard it, but it was there and he liked the taste of it.

"No. I want you to tell about it now." He moved closer to haunch down by her hips. He placed his ankle between her thighs. "What's the rush, darlin'? The night is young."

She looked at his eyes but then avoided them trying to peer past him at the dark sky. He smiled again. He was winning, he knew it; the stench of fear was unmistakable now. He took hold of her chin and forced her to meet his gaze. She tried to resist, but it was so easy to hold her still. He gently brushed her hair back with his left hand.

"Know what, Grace. I almost did trust you back then at the cabin. Almost." Her skin was cold and sweaty. "I told you all I could remember." He kept brushing her hair, observing the flow of dark tresses through his fingers. He twisted one long lock around his index finger and leaned in to catch her scent.

" I think it's only fair, that you return the favour, darlin'."

She reached for his right wrist. "I can't now, please. I'll tell you later, but not now." Her pupils were wide and he could hear her heart beating hastily. She was afraid. She was afraid of him. He laughed.

"You did tell somebody, didn't you? It was you all along," he hissed at her face as he squeezed her chin. "Those soldiers I saw when you thought that I had left. You called them. They came for me." The rage was boiling under his skin like oil, black and heated. He changed his hand to grip her throat, and she coughed.

"Yes, I called..."

He let go of her and stood up. The sky was black and full of cold diamond-stars, and he felt their cold light on his face. He looked down at her again. She was looking up too. She seemed frozen, but her hands and legs shook with minor convulsions and her breathing was shallow. The steel on his bones was bitterly cold.

_They made me into what I am now._

_They did this to me._

He opened his palms and looked at them.

_They own me._

_Somebody deserves to die._

"I see," he said though part of him was still unsure, "and you actually believed that you could get away with it."

_She deserves it._

His palms were sweating.

_They did this to me._

He kicked her in the ribs. Air exploded from her lungs and she curled up, gasping. He grabbed her by the waist of her trousers and pulled her down to lie on the grass. She shielded her head with her arms, but didn't fight back.

_She deserves it._

_She had it comin'._

He turned her around onto her back and sat astride on her hips. She tried to curl up and cover her stomach, but he pushed her shoulders back against the ground. He tasted the fear running in her and he let the claws out. This time he didn't mind the pain. There was a new kind of ecstasy in the sensation of adamantium cutting his flesh.

He pulled her up and held the claws at her face.

"You did this to me."

She wasn't looking at the claws but at him.

"You did this to me," he said and shoved her back down. Her face was ashen and she stank of fear, but her eyes were glued to him. He withdrew the right-hand claws and hit her hard on the side of her head with his fist.

"Fuck the sword," he said watching her under him. She had shielded her head with her forearms. She was bleeding; he smelled the blood. The rage in him lunged forward, and he let it come. She was afraid of him. He knew there was a grin on his face.

"I know it was you."

He wouldn't have bothered to listen even if she had responded. He forced her arms open, but she closed her eyes instantly and tried to turn her head away from him.

"Maybe it wasn't you personally, but I don't give a shit. Makes no difference to me."

A part of him was listening from the distance. The rest of him captured both of her wrists in his left hand and caressed her face with his right one. He let the claws out again and the stars reflected on their surface.

He pulled her up against him and pressed his cheek and sideburn against her jaw-line. He inhaled her scent and circled her earlobe with the tip of his nose.

"Last November I remembered." He breathed into to her ear. "On a Sunday night. I'd been drinkin' heavily." He snickered. "But since, you know, I can't get drunk so that might be a bit of an understatement. But I remembered.

"I was submerged into a glass tank, strapped down to the bottom, and it was filled with this strange fluid, not water, but somethin' thicker, green." He laid her gently down. "First I thought I was drownin' but the liquid was breathable so I breathed, again and again. It was so fuckin' hard I had to concentrate on it." The night had turned the air cold, and he inhaled deeply to wash away the memory of liquid from his lungs. A set of short convulsion shook her body. He looked down.

"They used blue lasers to cut me through the liquid." The old pain was still there in his body. "They had to cut me again and again 'cause I healed too fast. I felt my flesh burn and heal, but I couldn't see 'cause the blood stained the liquid and turned it brown.

"But they replaced it, several times. I suppose they couldn't see either."

Suddenly he was grateful for the warmth of her body under him; he felt less helpless. He closed his eyes, but the memories of a lived nightmare welcomed him.

"I passed out at some point, but it wasn't a blessin'.

"There were tubes comin' out of my chest when I came around again. Or goin' in I suppose. All these IVs and steel-coloured tubes, that burned like hell." He burst into a hysterical laughter. "It was hell. I guess it makes in only appropriate."

She convulsed, and he held her hands against the ground and waited for the episode to pass. She relaxed after a while and looked again at him.

"You have no idea," he said when her eyes were clear again. "You have no idea how it felt, when they injected the adamantium. No idea what so ever." Rising panic made his muscles tremble, and the rage fell back for a moment, but only to regroup and advance again in a tight, unforgiving formation.

"It burned my bones away, but they healed. They grew back.

"I healed.

"I was chosen 'cause I healed."

There were tears running from her eyes. A distant part of him knew she was crying.

"You can heal yourself too."

There were eight buttons on her shirt. He sliced the garment open with an attentive cut.

"It's all written on you, you see. All the damage and all the healin'. Every single cut, and I can read it, Grace. I can read you."

The scars were beautiful. Neat white lines on her lightly tanned skin; arranged into patterns, intersecting, dividing, presenting stories for him to read. All there plain at his sight. All contrary to his own skin, which like his mind was void of any memory.

Except for the adamantium on his bones and the ambiguously lucid dreams when he tried to sleep.

"I have a past, you know." He was angry beyond all reason. Mad. He didn't mind, but welcomed the feeling. "I have a history. I did come from somewhere."

He drew a thin red line on her skin with one of his claws, traced out the pattern of the scars. The scent of blood was intoxicating, and a shiver of fulfilment danced on his skin. He smiled.

"Unlike you, I was perfect." He spread his arms wide open over her. "I was perfect. I could take it. I was the only one who could take it." She struggled under him, tried to push herself free, but her hands only rent small pieces of turf off the ground. To him her movements seemed unreal.

"I heal perfectly. You scar." He covered her abdomen with his palms. The blood was warm, and he gently massaged her sides and stomach. "All these scars. Your whole fuckin' life written all over you." His fingers found an old long slash mark on her side. He reopened it with his claw.

"Like this one." Fresh hot blood poured on his fingers. "A wound from a sword. A lightweight-one. Maybe a rapier or a cutlass?" He tutted. "You must have seen it comin'. Why didn't you parry it?"

She said something, but he couldn't make out the words.

"Now this one here. It must have been a riffle." He cut a circle around it. "Heavy calibre. You're lucky it didn't tear you apart, darlin'."

The fresh blood from the wounds covered her skin and he tried to wipe it away with both of his hands. He wanted to see the scars that he could never have, but was only able to feel them through the oily liquid of her body. He made one more effort and then raised his hand to watch in fascination how the blood lost its warmth into the night. His hand steamed and on a whim he licked her blood off his palm.

The blood was flavoured with adrenalin: a bitter-sweet tang behind the saltines and iron. He wiped his hand on her shoulder where the shirt was still dry. Her eyes were open. She tried to speak, but there was no sound. She swallowed and looked at him again.

"Please, you..."

He smiled. There was only fear to be found in her eyes. A thin layer of fear, panic and desperation on the surface and nothing beneath it. The whole deepness of confidence, courage and arrogance was gone.

_She's afraid of me._

He cut and tore a piece of her left sleeve off and rubbed off most of the blood on her diaphragm. The bleeding had slowed down and he managed to uncover the row of three puncture marks, that he had been looking for. He threw the rag away.

He matched the tips of his right-hand claws on the scars applying pressure gently so that the skin yielded but did not brake.

"Your skin is beautiful," he said. "Mine is flawless."

He pushed the claws in, and the skin broke, parted on both sides of each of his claws. The blades conducted the warmth of her body into his fist, and he felt the smoothness of her inner organs against the metal. He growled and shivered with pleasure.

* * *

She screamed, when he was two thirds of the way through. It startled him and he jammed his fist down. That nailed her to the ground, and he sat there, disoriented, staring at her screaming face, panting. Somehow he didn't quite get it. 

Her eyes stared at the sky. She was squealing now, throwing her head from side to side, but eyes still locked to the stars. The full-blown panic reeked out of her as pus from an infected wound and its stench made him fall back. He covered his mouth and nose with his hand as he scrambled to his feet, but his hand was covered in her blood. That brought the stench into his throat. He retched and then threw up.

He washed his hands and face with water from a puddle in an old truck-track. The water was cold and it left his hands somewhat muddy, but it washed the blood away. He wiped his face dry on his forearms. The dropping temperature had summoned a thin mist from the ground and the moisture dampened the world on scent. He shook his mane and shoulders and went back to her.

She had curled up into a foetal position before she had passed out.

_She had it commin'._

She wasn't bleeding anymore. The scent of fresh blood was gone, but the smell of fear still remained. He snarled at it as he kneeled down.

She seemed so useless now in his eyes. A pile of flesh and bones and torn, bloody clothes.

_I could've killed her in her sleep six years ago._

_I should've killed her at the yard._

He leaned his elbow on his knee and his cheek on his palm. The rage had ebbed along with the scent of blood.

_Third's the charm._

He shoved her over to her back. Some of the wounds reopened, and the fresh blood made his hesitate. It was all too familiar somehow; the wounds, the helplessness, the uselessness, the state of surrender. He felt suddenly ill at ease.

_She's all I have._

Something turned in his stomach and he felt fear.

_She's my only lead. If she dies, I'm left with nothin'._

Her pulse was weak. There was too much blood on the grass, and he knew she was in shock.

_She had it commin'._

_They did this to me, and this I what I do._

_This is who I am._

_Somebody deserved it._

_Somebody deserves to die._

Her heart added a fluttering set of extra beats to her pulse, and she convulsed. He panicked, sat astride over her and tried to hold her still. Her spine arched under him, and he feared she would choke, but then her muscles unclenched, and her heart moved into a steady stronger beat. He listened to it for a while and tried to soothe himself by gently rubbing the remains of the seizure away from her arms and shoulders. The tension was gone, but she was cold. He pushed her hair away from her face.

_Somebody deserves it._

_Please, don't let it be her._

It was cold, he realised. He got up and walked to his truck forcing himself to keep a casual, even pace. He took the felt blanket from behind the backrest and began to spread it open over the passenger's seat but then changed his mind. Instead he took the blanket to her, laid it open next to her on the grass and carefully lifted her on to it. He folded the fabric meticulously around her making sure he left no part of her uncovered. He then lifted lifted her up, carried her to the car and managed to get her resting on the seat without undue discomfort. She was tall for a woman, and there wasn't too much space left for him even after he bent her legs close to her torso. He pushed the door close and sat behind the wheel.

It was annoyingly tight to sit between the door and the crown of her head so he lifted her head to rest it on his thigh. He started the engine, put on the lights and drove slowly out to the road avoiding the heaviest bumps on the way. Her body moved along with movements of the car and her head swayed in his lap.

It felt uncomfortable at first, to have a woman's head in his lap. He wanted to move her, but there was no room to spare. He kept his back overly upright instead, but after a while he noticed he had forgotten to avoid her.

He lifted her head closer to him.

_Somebody deserves it, but it won't be her._


	3. 9: The Surface Boundary Layer

**Caveat lector:** I lost contact with my only native speaker beta reader so there unavoidably is a bunch of mistakes in this chapter. If you see any, don't bitch about it, but send me message and let me know. Or maybe you would like to beta for me (but please do remember: I prefer a beta who knows British English. No offense, North Americans :)

And read the preceding chapters (1 to 6 in 'All Partial Evil: Part I') if you want to know how we got here. And there are details you need to know.

* * *

**9. Surface boundary layer**

_I'm not drifting, but neither am I a fixed point in the blackness. Things are moving away from me, gaining distance, but I don't care. It makes no difference. There's no reason to be bothered._

_This is easier._

_This requires no effort._

_But I don't let go. I just stay._

_There's someone in the darkness picking up my body and carrying it away, and after a while I follow._

_The Carrier is tall and lean, long-limbed, clad in dusty blue. A man, maybe, but the face is featureless._

_He carries my body back into the mist-filled forest of young aspens. It is warm there; he brings me back. I follow._

* * *

It hurts. It all hurts. It hurt when I passed out and it's pain that wakes me up.

I can't breathe. It hurts too much. The pain is in my lungs and in my bones, and I can't breathe. It hurts. I hear myself whimper under my breath.

Someone lifts my head up. I hear words, but they make no sense. Just a voice. Male. There's liquid in my mouth. He wants me to drink. It's thick and warm and it takes a long time to finish it up.

He speaks to me again.

I pass out.

This time the darkness is peaceful.

* * *

She wasn't there when he returned with the Italian take-out, he knew it the moment he unlocked and opened the door. He stood there for a moment, one hand on the doorknob, food bags seized in the other. He wanted to slam the door, but just closed it casually instead. He would not draw any attention to himself and consequently compromise the location, the same reason he had declined the free delivery. He took the food to the kitchenette at the back of the motel room and unloaded the cardboard boxes from the bags on the countertop. The food was still warm, and he decided he might just as well eat it. No point in passing up a resource to which you might not return. There was a fork in the sink and he picked it up.

She had been unconscious for three, almost four full days. He should have got some food then while she was still knocked out, but he had felt unwilling to leave her by herself back then. Her condition had been too unstable for the first 24 hours. There had been a point during the first night when he had seriously considered taking her to a hospital. She had been dangerously hypothermic, shaking and breathing with shallow whispers, but eventually he hadn't dared to. There was no solid explanation he could have given when asked what had happened, and even the most dimwitted ER-nurse in the history of medical care would have seen that she had been washed and cared for before arriving to the hospital. So instead he had stripped her and himself naked and slept with her through that night, covering her cold flesh with his own warm one and willing the warmth back to her body. By the morning she had been warm again, and he had got up and dressed her again.

Maybe she had called for someone to pick her up. The was a phone on the night table and he hadn't thought to disable it. He opened a box of cannelloni and began to eat. The cheese was still scalding and he carefully blew on every fork-full before letting it past his lips. He kept thinking about the phone. An hour wasn't really enough time to arrange and execute a pick-up. Unless you had a big enough organisation.

_For fuck's sake, Logan._

He rubbed his brow with his right-hand knuckles and continued eating.

_That's paranoia. I ain't goin' down that road again._

He put the food down and took a can of beer from the bag. He snapped it open and took a long swing from it. It was lukewarm and not his preferred brand, but he tried to agree to its taste. He sloshed the liquid around in his mouth, swallowed and made a face. Abruptly the frustration he had tried to avoid boiled over, and he threw the half-full beer can across the room hitting the door bang on target. He cursed to his heart's content, but held in check the urge to scream in rage. He wasn't about to go down that road either.

Never again, if he had any say in it.

_Fat chance._

He picked up the food again.

So. Grace had to be close by. She didn't have any clothes left, so she could't be far. Both their clothing had been soaked in blood and mud, and by the time they had reached the motel the blood had clotted and the mud had dried. He had had to wash her: the stench of blood, death and fear had been over-povering and it had made him gag when he had cut her clothes off to undress her. He had sheared off his own clothes too. The jeans had been past redeeming anyhow, but the shirts might have made it if only he had dared to pull them past his face. He had been running on the edge. The adrenalin and the primal fight-reaction had still made his hands tremble and he had not been sure if could have stayed in control if the scent had got to his face. So he had cut his shirts open and had wrapped all the garments in three garbage bags to seal off the smell until he could dispose them.

He rubbed his nose. A mild scent of roses and brown sugar hovered on his the skin of his hand, and he liked it, it felt homely.

It had been difficult to wash an unconscious person and in the end he had had to get into the bathtub with her. He had sat behind her, with her between his thighs in order to keep her from sliding down. He had scrubbed her down with the motel's rose-scented soap and water almost hot enough to burn. The filth had turned the water brown, then deep red, and he had thrown up once because of the smell. The sight and scent of blood had made his spine hurt, had made him snarl inadvertently and he had sniffed her bare neck and hairline, growling, before he had been able to stop himself. After that he had concentrated on the dusty scent of the rosy soap, and it had helped.

There was only tomato sauce and white slivers of melted cheese left in the box and he threw it into the bin.

_She won't be far. _

That thought made it easier to function. He took the rag he had used to dry her forehead and chest during the second night when her temperature had run high, and he went to clean up the beer stains along the can's flight path. The outburst felt embarrassing now. There was a dent in the door but not big enough to be too obvious he thought. He took the can, poured the remaining beer away and rinsed the cloth. He liked for the things to be shipshape. It gave him a chance to have control over something. Anything.

He folded the rag and hung it over the tab. He put the rest of the beer and soda cans into the fridge and realised that he hadn't turned on the lights only then as the fridge's light fell on the floor. He sighed and looked out. It was already dark and the stars were out. The sky had that cold, crispy clearness of a way-below-freesing winter night to it, and he knew it wouldn't be long before the first frost. He leaned over the counter to get a better look through the kitchenette's window. He could make out the Cassiopeia's tilted W, but the North Star to which one of the arms pointed, was blinded by the eaves.

He sighed again. He had learnt that he knew quite a bit about the night sky. Why, he couldn't imagine, but he had lost the interest in letting it bother him. In a way it was reassuring to be familiar with that vastness, to know there was something he could name and organise where ever he went. He had been to Australia two years back and he had known the stars of the southern hemisphere too. In the sky he had a map compared to which all his mysteries seemed trivial. What ever had happened to him, that had had no affect to the stars.

It had been a clear, starry night the night he had taken down Grace.

He pulled back from the window as the uneasiness returned to his body. The starlight had glinted on his claws and when he had crouched over close to her face he had seen cold, hard stars reflected in her eyes. Her pupils had been wide, dilated to the maximum and filled with sky as she stared past his distorted face. He remembered how she had tried to cover her face, and how he had forced her to look. But the funny thing was, she had kept her eyes nailed to his, pleading with him, but not to beg him stop. He rubbed his eye with the heel of his left hand. She hadn't begged him to stop.

What had she begged for? She had tried to say something, but he hadn't paid attention and why would he had? It wasn't like she could have said anything to make him -

_- help?_

He stood up abruptly and stuffed his hands into his pockets defensively.

_She wasn't lookin' at me when she screamed. She was lookin' at the sky._

He leaned over the counter again and peered at the sky. There was nothing there, only the stars.

_No way. It fuckin' can't be that._

He laughed aloud and straightened himself, grinning.

_Stars. That fuckin' -. _He rubbed his eye again. _Oh, hell. She's afraid of the stars._

Logan went out with an intent to find her. The whole concept of being afraid of stars was so inconceivable that he wanted to ask her about it right away. How could you be afraid of stars when there was a man with six inch blades sitting on you chest and cutting your skin away?

* * *

He found her sitting by the pool with her feet dangling in the water. Only the underwater lights were turned on, and the inner yard of the motel was washed with dancing blue shadows. He crossed the yard quietly but with a certain purpose in his step. She didn't seem to notice his approach until he stood by her side.

"Hello, Logan," she said somnolently, as if half drowned in the the shimmering of light on water. He grunted wordlessly. She chuckled, but offered nothing more. He studied her features with a sidelong glance. She was wearing one of his spare t-shirts, a white one, and his spare jeans, and they both were far too large for her; she had rolled the trouser legs up over her knees. The shirt hung loosely on her, and he could see her shoulder through the collar. She smelled of whisky.

Logan remained standing.

"I have the food inside if you're still hungry." He tried to keep the bite out of his voice, but there was something acutely irritating in her air. He took a look around and counted the lit windows of the motel. It was end-season now and a Sunday night, and only a handful of rooms had quests. Mostly business-sort of people he assumed; most of the cars upfront were dark or silver-grey corporate sedans.

"Do you want to eat?" he asked again when she hadn't answered. "Grace?"

She startled slightly, looked around and then up to him. "Oh, what? No, I don't feel like eating just know, but – hey, thanks anyhow." She smiled looking at him before turning away again. "Maybe later," she added and took a sip of whisky from the bottle.

Logan sat down on the tiles some distance away from her and studied her neck.

"I see you found my whisky."

"Aye." She lifted the bottle up and studied its label. "Good brand this one. Irish but okay." She twisted her torso to offer the bottle to him. He shook his head, and she turned away yet again. "I would have chosen something with a more peat in it, but this one's alright too." She took another sip and laid the bottle down.

The casual lack of concern about her suddenly got to him. She had been like that ever since she had woken up. As though there was nothing wrong with him; as though nothing had happened. He had had it and he would not put up with that no more.

"I don't trust you, Grace," he blurted. "I don't know who you are or who you represent, but – oh, fuck!" He stormed up and paced back and forth behind her back puffing with anger. She remained motionless and he sat down on his haunches right by her left shoulder and tried to keep his voice low.

"I've spent last four days tryin' to figure out why it seems more useful to keep you alive, but I don't know," he said clutching his teeth together. "I don't know. Who are you? Really. Why are you afraid of the stars, but not of me cuttin' my way through you?" He leaned in closer and growled into her ear: "Why, Grace? Wouldn't you tell me why?"

"I don't know either," she said quietly. Light reflected from the water illuminated her face with a dancing veil. "I honestly don't know. It's a gut feeling telling me I don't need to worry about you. But why, I don't know why."

He seized her jaw and turned her head to face him. "But I did hurt you, Grace," he said mustering all the menace hidden within him. She twisted her head free.

"Aye, you did." She smiled briefly and reached for the bottle. "Makes no sense, I know. But there's nothing much that makes sense these days, is there." She drank slowly and deep, then wiped her mouth with her palm.

_My gut feelin' tells me to keep you alive._

He grunted feeling frustrated.

_Why does it always has to go the hard way?_

"Grace, I need you to chop off my head one day, so I have to keep you around till that." He sat down properly leaving his knees up and his arms resting on them. "But I don't know. Trustin' you seems an awful long leap of faith to me. Just fuckin' stupid to be honest here. I had never heard of adamantium before, but you knew it right away, and that makes me to think. You took those soldiers out like a pro and called a one helluva clean up crew to clear up the mess. Makes me think even more. So who the hell are you really?"

She looked past him, sighed, glanced at him and smiled resignedly. "I go by the name of Grace Gordon and I work for a counter-terrorism agency. Other than that – I'm sorry, Logan."

"That fella, that Nick somethin', he's one of you too?"

"Aye, he is."

"Right," he said to the back of her head. Her hair was combed back and along her scull, slightly oily, but dark, dark like otter's coat.

It all felt strange: to be sitting here with the woman who he had been sure was somehow connected and thus in his eyes was partly to blame for all the griefs in his life. A convenient scapegoat to be slaughtered for the crimes of others.

_I wanted for her to be the scapegoat. _

He wasn't after a revenge. He wanted something more. He wanted for someone to feel all the pain and torture, all the fear and desolation that turned into the bottomless desperation he felt at times; to feel all that shit that was all he remembered. It wasn't justice he was after (he wanted justice, but he didn't believe in it) and it wasn't retribution either. He wanted to pass on the suffering, he wanted to give it to someone else, and maybe then he wouldn't have to live with it anymore.

Grace drank again from the bottle; he realised a good third of the whisky was already gone.

_She already knows pain, _he thought as he watched her place the bottle down with abundant care. _She knows pain and it wouldn't make much of a difference if mine was added to hers._

The one to receive his pain would be someone feeling perfectly safe and sound. Someone who would have caused others to suffer, but who would think himself to be perfectly safe. Not her, but someone with something to loose.

He inhaled slowly and deep through his nose and he snarled slightly at the scent of her. It was easy to discard the scents of whisky, but the smell of chlorine from the pool was distracting with its throat-entangling thickness. He sneezed and was forced to repeat the process. There was no smell of lie on her, only sadness and dusty roses.

Grace swirled around, and the sudden movement made him shy. He frowned angrily at her, but she either didn't notice or just didn't care. She pointed a finger at him.

"I think I should know you from somewhere, you know, Logan," she said squinting her eyes. "I'm sure I have met you before."

His hackles stood up.

"You seem familiar somehow, you know." She tilted her head and measured him with her eyes. "I don't recall ever seeing you face, but that," she chuckled, "that doesn't mean a shite. I don't remember faces anyhow, but I do remember how people are. I remember how people move." She paused, lifted her chin up and bit the corner of her lower lip. "Aye, I think I do remember you. Nick was right." Her eyes lit up and she smiled with genuine delight. "We did meet in Nam. I remember you now."

Logan felt frozen. "How do you mean we met in Nam?"

She pulled her left leg from the water and turned halfway around to face him. "Aye, in '64, or maybe '65. I get those mixed up every time, but it was just before the war anyhow. We pulled you lads out of the jungle, don't you remember?"

Cold fire burned in his spine. "No, I guess I don't."

She looked confused for a second, then embarrassed or sad. "No, I suppose you wouldn't." She turned away again.

Logan moved in closer to her. He run his eyes along the line of her neck and the collar of the shirt. Her skin was lightly tanned, smooth and easily penetrable. He looked down at his arms. He could almost see the blue flames running along them.

"I was in Nam?" he whispered as he placed his hand on her neck and stroked the side of her spine with his thumb. "What was I doin' in Nam?"

"Standard pre-assault recon, mostly. The jungle was thick with black ops back then."

He pulled his hand way. "And you were there too."

"Aye. Something went south and we were called in to retrieve you."

He frowned. The world around him seemed surreal and distant; somehow like a globe of silver screen on which an eerie movie placed on a street you know was playing. Only he was real. He wasn't sure if he could say the same of Grace.

"Who was I?" His own voice had an echo to it.

"Oh, I don't remember you name either." She threw a sidelong glance at him. "Another thing I'm not so good at keeping track." She leaned forward with her hands by her knees on the pool's edge. She looked up to the sky. "You were one of a special black ops team. Your job was to purge key locations of Chinese and Vietcong spies and combatants. Standard, like I said, but somehow things got out of hand."

"How?" His throat was dry.

"You made more of a mess than you were supposed to make." She picked up the bottle, but didn't take a drink. "You killed people you weren't supposed to kill."

"Who?"

She took the drink then. He stared at her ear.

"Logan, it was a long time ago. Let it rest, all wars have their demons." She sounded tired and annoyed.

"Who did we kill?"

She whispered a groan. "They said the collateral damage was too high, and you know perfectly well what that means." She sighed again. "You should be grateful that you don't remember."

He knew what she meant; he had seen a documentary some months ago.

The feeling of segregation was suffocating.

"I need a drink."

She passed the bottle to him and he drank eagerly. The cask strength malt burnt his throat and his nose making his eyes water. The burning run down his gullet and along the lining of his stomach, and he could map out its shape and location by the spreading burning. The pain gave him a connection to the reality.

"Did I have," he coughed, " Did I have the claws back then?"

"I don't know. I really don't remember details like that." She dipped her hand into the pool and poured the water slowly from the cup of her hand. He watched the droplets run down her fingers and off her finger tips. "But," she continued and dried her hand on the t-shirt, "I don't think your claws are something you would have boasted about. So maybe you had them." She lost herself into a private world of her own, and he let her go.

_Maybe it ain't that bad that I don't remember shit like that._

He watched her dabble her feet in the pool. She smiled vaguely at the pattern of waves she created. His neck itched.

_This is gettin' way too complicated._

He lied down on his back and let his hands rest palms down on his belly. The shady blue buildings of the motel encircled the field of his vision and the dark sky opened straight above him. There was a vaguely chill breeze drawing moisture from the water, and he felt the humidity on the hairs of his forearms. The tiles under him were still warm from the sun. He searched for the North Star and imagined the skies turning around it.

_I'm caught in this strange, perverted dance with her_, he thought.

A satellite caught his eye and he followed its journey across the heavens with his eyes.

_Neither one of us is leadin', but we're still partners for this one song._

The satellite reached the zenith and he turned his eyes to her. She too was staring at the sky.

_There's no goin' back anymore. _

He sat up and pulled his knees up and closer to him. "The other night, you know Grace, that shouldn't have happened." There was no excusing for what he was, he accepted that. "I lost control. It won't happen again."

She was quiet for a long while, but the he saw something change in her.

"This world is making me hollow, Logan. It's eating me up, from the inside." She laughed with dark barks, grew then sombre again and took another swing from the whisky. He envied her ability to get drunk.

"No, that's not right exactly. This world is fine, brilliant, my friend. And I should know, I've seen hundreds." She tilted her head back and stared at the night sky with mouth open and pose sluggish from the alcohol. "Fucking light pollution, you can't even see the bloody stars from it."

"I thought you were afraid of the stars."

She laughed again and looked at him. "It's not the stars. It's the distance."

"The distance to what? The stars?"

She turned her head lazily around and gazed at him with drunken haziness. He got the feeling that she was about to mock him.

"What are you really afraid of, Wolverine? The past catching up with you?" She drank from the bottle while her eyes remained fixed on his. "The past not catching up with you?"

"Don't fuck with me, darlin'"

"Not about to, Wolverine. Not about to."

She pulled her legs from the pool and pushed herself closer to him leaving wet stains on the reddish-brown tiles. She put her hand inside his t-shirt, through the neck, and her fingers felt dry and warm against his skin. She moved her hand over his collarbone, down towards the armpit, fingers fiddling gently, looking for something.

The chain was there, cold and steel-dark, and she pulled the dog tag out. She turned it over in her hand, under the half light of the pool side and studied it with her fingers. She found something, laid down the whisky and pried the chain over his head with both hands. The chain got entangled with his hair, but she was gentle and pulled the hair free one lock at a time. She turned away and held the tag up against a light so that he could see what she saw.

"The notch," she said softly, with remembrance. She tilted her head to the right and smiled. "Can you remember the story about the notch, Logan?"

"No."

_There's no memory in me. Not of the notch. Or of you._

"People used to say that you were supposed to put the tag between the teeth of a fallen soldier and then give a good kick on the jaw, so that the tag would be buried into the skull. That way the identity would stay with the corpse. The notch is there to hold the tag in place while you kick." She opened her mouth and put the dog tag between her teeth to see if would fit. It didn't and she snickered. "People will believe anything if it's just dumb enough. What would you do if your dead buddy didn't have a head anymore, eh?"

Logan took the chain from her and slipped it over his head. She looked at him with narrow eyes contemplating something. A young couple came to the pool, undressed and dived in. Waves travelled across the pool and broke against the sides.

"We don't fear death, Logan, you and I."

He watched the water for a while and the replied: "No."

"It's the loss of self that scares us witless, right?"

_Yes_. "Guess so."

She remained motionless, and he thought of empty eggshells laying on the ground, hollow, eaten. He had eaten seagull eggs once, somewhere. The taste was all he remembered.

"I'm so far from home, you know."

"I think we both are."

She looked around at him, sharply, before returning into staring at the darkness.

"Have you ever surrendered, Logan?" she said and let herself fall softly against the tiles.

"No." _ Yes._

"You're lying. You have. Once." She rolled over to her side and lay there with one arm stretched straight and her head resting on it; the other one bent, hand under her cheek. "That's okay, Logan, don't worry about it. I think once is enough. I don't think you can surrender more than once in your life. After that it's just a one more way to react among all the other possible reactions. Once is enough. After that you know you're not any different from the rest of the mankind. Womankind. Humanity. Or what ever."

"Grace, you're full of shit."

She turned onto her back and laughed. "I am, aren't I."

* * *

He hadn't really slept at all when he heard her get up and walk over to him. He felt hot. The blanket was far too thick, but but he liked the weight of it. The evading sleep had made him annoyed and he refused to open his eyes.

Maybe she would go away and let him be.

"I know you're awake."

He said nothing, and she lifted the blanket and let the cool air stream over him. The feeling made him growl softly. He turned over to his back and pushed the hair away from his face. She climbed in and let the blanket fall back on both of them. He put his left hand, the hand next to her, under his head.

"What?" He just wanted to sleep. Never mind what dreams that might bring.

She reached for him, set her fingers and then her palm on his side and pushed upwards, moving her hand onto his chest and across it. Her fingers combed the hair on his muscles, but he removed himself from the feeling and took hold of her hand. There was a scent on her skin, an aroma of need that he wished would not be there.

"Grace, go back to your own bed."

She didn't answer him, but moved to sit legs astride on his abdomen. She was naked and he felt her heat. She ran her hands over his collarbones and down his shoulders and biceps. Her eyes burned and she leaned down to kiss him. He grabbed her by her shoulders, pushed her aside and got up. He walked over to the window and set out to stare into the phoney darkness of a city night.

"Best you got to your own bed, Grace," he said without turning to face her. He felt frustrated to no end. He crossed his arms and pressed his right forearm against the cold surface of the window. That actually helped a bit.

He waited in silence and then gave in, went back to her and sat down on the bed. He scratched the hairline on his forehead. His back was suffused with the warmth radiating from her, but the musky scent of pheromones was gone. He waited for something to happen not really knowing what to say or do.

She pushed the blanket away and sat up next to him on the bed. She tucked her hands under her thighs and stared at her knees.

"I know it would be stupid," she said quietly. He glanced over to her. Lights of a passing car washed over her body.

_Fuck, she's all muscle. I never realised. _

He turned away again. She stood up and walked past his face to get a glass of water at the kitchenette. He let his eyes follow her and watched how she emptied the glass on one go. She put the glass to the sink and paused there by the counter for a moment. Then she turned around and went right for her bed, climbed in and hid herself under the cover of her blanket. He thought he could hear her cry.

"Grace?" He couldn't believe he would get this shit from her. He got abundant amount of attention from women in bars and he turned down more offers that he accepted. Some of the rejected ones made a show of it trying to play "Oh, I'm not beautiful enough for you" crying game with him. Sometimes he played along and sometimes he even changed his mind, but she –. It was a surprise to see her use that card.

He felt he owed her, so he played along.

"Grace, it's not that I don't –." He sighed and started again: "I could fuck you, you know, you're real good lookin' woman, but I don't want to – I just don't think it would be wise."

He waited for a reply, but got none and he leaned back to his bed covering only his legs and hips this time. Her faint scent lingered on the cover and he didn't want to have it too close to his nose.

Maybe he would fall asleep after all.

* * *

He woke up when she sat down on his bed again. He got half up, but fell back on the pillow when he realised it was her.

"Grace, I really meant what I said. Go back to your bed."

She was once again wearing his t-shirt. "Couldn't I just sleep with you? I don't mean sex, but just sleep in the same bed with you." She didn't sound pleading, but she didn't look at him either.

"Why?"

"I'm lonely, Logan. I close my eyes and all I see are shadows of people and friends long gone. I want to feel the presence of another person by me." She lifted her feet on the bed and hugged her knees. "I'm the Last One, the one who has to stay behind until everyone else has gone. I'm the one who'll be left behind."

He had no idea what she was talking about, but he recognised loneliness when he saw it.

"Havin' sex with me won't do you any good, you know that."

_At least it has never worked for me._

Grace began to stand up, but he touched her on her shoulder. "Alright, stay if you think that's what you need right now. I slept with you butt naked the first night, you were so hypothermic." Suddenly he was acutely aware of his own bare skin and he felt an uncommon need to justify his actions. "Nothin' happened. I just had to keep you warm."

She hesitated. "Are you sure?"

Anger surfaced and he frowned. "Nothin' happened. I wouldn't fuck you just like that."

"No, I meant if are you sure it's okay if I sleep here?"

He felt ridiculed. "Suit yourself." He moved over to make room for her and she crawled under the blanket. He stayed on his back as Grace lay on her side facing him. After a while he felt her touch him on the shoulder.

"I knew you kept me warm the first night, I remember the warmth. Thank you."

Logan sighed and let his body relax. "Don't worry about it. Just try to sleep." She stroked his cheek with her fingers and turned around. He suddenly remembered the night he had spent sleeping next to her pretending to be lovers. He turned to his side and pulled her close to his chest without a hesitation. She let him do it and he felt a touch of relief in the gesture.

"You should be afraid of me, Grainne," he whispered into her hair. "You know me for what I am. It was pure luck you didn't die on that night under the stars. I meant to kill you, you know. To have you dead under me. Nothin' would have made me happier. You shouldn't trust me like this." He wondered why he felt the need to warn her. Her hair smelled sublime, of earth and her, and her body felt so good under his arm.

"I have no fear of you in me, remember?"

He inhaled her scent and engulfed his face into her hair. "Yeah, I remember you sayin' that, but that don't change the fact that I'm not the nicest guy in the world. You shouldn't trust me." He felt sad when he said it, but he buried the feeling away. He was who he was.

_This is me laying next to a woman I killed twice and wanted to rape as many times._

He wondered what had stopped him. Maybe she had been right about him at some level. He listened for her to fall asleep, and when her breathing was deep and slow enough he slipped his left arm under her neck so that he could have her properly in his arms. Somehow it felt necessary to do so.

* * *

This time it was her breathing that woke him up. At some point during the night she had turned around which had brought her face close to his throat and neck. The sensation of her exhales on his skin tickled him softly, and still half asleep he turned onto his back hauling her torso along with his arms. He let a waft of content escape his lungs as he began to drift back to sleep.

The weight of her on his chest and the scent and warmth of her body kept him awake. The pressure, the contact felt good. It made her seem more real, made him seem more real, and he found his hands stroking her back even though he had never meant them to. He didn't want to stop. He felt the lines of her scars under his fingers, and her skin was soft, so soft, like silken velvet or supple ivory. An arousal began to constrict his lungs. He wanted her so badly. To feel all that skin against his. To have her breathe under him. To have her push against him.

His hands began to tremble.

_No. _He suddenly saw where all this could be leading. _No way. Get a grip. No way I'm lettin' this happen. No way in hell._

He began to push her away, but her woke up and to his surprise she pulled him on top of her and between her thighs. She felt so good and warm under him, so alive, her pubic bone pressing against his erection. He wanted to move away, but dared not to. He merely stayed there eyes closed, growling under his breath, wishing he had the willpower to move away. She felt so good, so good, so good. Like heaven. Her hands found his hair, and it felt so good to have her hands and fingers in his hair pulling gently. He kissed her, bit her lower lip before suckling and nibbling the skin on her throat and shoulder.

_To hell with it._

He pushed himself up and pulled away her t-shirt (his shirt, now soaked with her scent) to discover her breasts and the muscular abdomen and the fact that she wasn't wearing the boxers. Her skin smelled intoxicating, tasted intoxicating, she tested intoxicating: a salty taste full of pheromones. She growled with pleasure.

Her voice made him hesitate.

"Grace." She pulled him in and kissed him hungrily. "Grace, listen to me," he said to her ear. "I can't leave you pregnant." He lay on her trying to cover her entire skin with his. "I'm clean since, you know –," she kissed him again, " – since I can't get sick, but I will never father a child, no child deserves a dad like me." She wrapped her legs around him and left him breathless.

She licked his earlobe with the tip of her tongue. "Doesn't matter. We're even then, since I can't get pregnant."

He took her word for it. He wanted her too much, and she felt so good. Warm, wet and tight around him; the muscles of her vagina moving around his cock; her hands scraping his back and pulling his buttocks closer to her. He kissed her again and buried his face into her hair.

She had her orgasm slightly before he came and she cried, silently, again. This time he ignored her, not really wanting to know why she cried. He stayed inside her holding her shoulders until he was sure all desire had left his body. She kept hugging him until he moved. He pulled out of her, got up and went to the bathroom. By the time he returned she was already asleep. He spent a moment staring at her sleeping form and deciding whether or not to return to the same bed with her. Ultimately he made up his mind and got into the other bed.

_It won't feel the same anyhow._ _It never does. _

_All things change._


	4. 10: The Baseline

**10. The Baseline**

"Hi, Nick." I hear a coarse scraping sound as he covers the mike and shouts for the others to shut up.

"Grace, is that you?"

I can almost hear the silence surrounding him. "Aye, it's me. I'm fine. Don't put me on the speaker."

"Where the hell are you? You were supposed to be in Vancouver two days ago."

"I got delayed, but I'm fine."

"Don't give me that shit." He sounds frustrated. "We tried to track your transponder when you didn't show up, but there's no signal."

I cut him short. "He found it and thought it was a tumour, so he cut it out."

"What? How did?"

"Logan. I ran into him in that diner I went after we parted. It's a long story. I'll tell it when I get there." I really don't feel up to this.

He pauses as he thinks. "Okay. We're going to get you here ASAP. Where are you?"

"Actually I don't know exactly. In a motel, but it has to be somewhere around Calgary."

"Aunt Lisa sends her love."

"Oh for fuck's sake, he's not listening. He was gone long before I woke up this morning. I just need a lift home. I really don't know where I am and I actually do think I'm in Calgary area. It's not a fucking code." I try not to raise my voice. "You're tracking this call anyway, so just figure it out and get me a ride."

"Okay. I got it." There's a quick pause and I hear someone whispering something. "Someone will be there in two hours." Another pause. A longer one. "What happened, really? Are you alright? You got us worried."

"I'm fine. I ran into him, we talked and things got messy. But it's, like I said, a long story." I yawn. "He saw our lads at the cabin and got into his head that we put the adamantium into him. That didn't make him too happy."

"He saw us." A question disguised as a statement.

"Aye, but I don't think that matters much. His head is so fucked up that he sees conspiracies everywhere. And anyhow, there's nothing he can do about it."

"And you don't happen to know where he's heading?"

"Nope. Not a clue. I don't think he knows either."

"Alright, he'll turn up eventually, but I really would've liked to talk with him. We have to find out how the adamantium tech got leaked out."

"Nick, we've been through this. His mind is a mess and he still doesn't remember anything. All he has are dreams and nightmares about the operation itself."

"You know there are ways." There's a shadow of assertive persuasion in his voice.

"Aye, I know, and he wouldn't survive them. At least his mind wouldn't, and the Code places him under my jurisdiction." I couldn't hand him over even if I wanted to. There are parts of the Code that evolve and adapt to the situation, but mine is not one of them.

"There are people who think that in this case the leak is more important that the finer points of the Code."

I know perfectly well who he means. "Fuck them. You won't have him."

"As long as you are aware of it. You know I agree with you on this one, Grace."

"Nick, I know finding the leak is important. It would explain so much." I yawn again. "God. I really could use some tanktime."

"Grace, really, what happened?"

"I'll tell you when I get there."

"Okay. Do you need anything?"

"A new transponder, but the tank will take care of that. Ach, almost forgot. I have a sample of his DNA. The real thing, not just hairs or blood stains."

"Bone marrow? How did you manage that? I don't think he volunteered."

"I had to delve for it."

"Nice. We'll prep a tank for you. You'll be able to go under as soon as you get here."

"Good, that adamantium really fucked up my systems."

These a moment of silence on his end of the phone line. "Bone marrow DNA." He sounds pleased. "That's excellent. That'll able us to find out his age and that will give us a baseline for the leak hunt. But I thought his bones are covered with adamantium?"

"No, come on, bone and the marrow are living structures. The adamatium just keeps the bone intact, but the veins and nerves need to get through it to the marrow."

"Oh, I see. You're the physician here. I'll make sure they're ready for the stuff when you arrive."

"You do that. I can't go into the tank before I loose his DNA, and I really, really need that."

"Have you eaten anything?"

"Yes, mom. He brought me stuff. I'm fine."

"No, you're not, but let's pretend that we agree on that. Oji will be there before you know it. I'll see you when you get here."

"Alrighty, until."

"Okay."


	5. 11: The Point of Origin

**11. The Point of Origin**

_It has to be a dream. No state of reality can be this vivid and intense._

_His right hand is inside a man's chest, buried deep through the solar plexus and thrusted upwards beneath the ribcage. He's sitting on the poor bastard and his fingertips are in contact with the man's heart. There is no pulse but the ventricular fibrillation that heralds death._

_He looks up from the man (the walls and organs of the man's thorax surrounding his hand feel warm and tender, much like a womb). It is not dark, really; deep shadows and dark, stealthy, skulking figures submerged within them. One shade breaks away and runs crouched over to him._

_'Nice job, little brother.'_

_The shadow has a built like his and a hungry grin: he can see the white fangs in its mouth._

_'You fucking bit the bastard's throat in two!' The shadow smacks his shoulder and bolts away. 'Next one's mine, little brother. You can't have 'em all!' it barks at him as it immerses in the darkness that is vegetation._

_It is so hot, so humid. All sounds are muffled and disorienting, all without a point of origin._

_Bit? He looks down at the corpse again. The man's throat is torn open and he can see the cartilage rings that are meant to protect the windpipe. There's something in his mouth. He pulls his hand from the man's chest and spits that something on his palm. It's a piece of skin, flesh and blood mixing with his saliva, and he swallows before he realises what the gob in his mouth is._

_He knows this ain't right. This here, right here, is the part where you're supposed to scream your lungs out and wake up shaking, but there is no fear here. His conscious self is baffled, but the dream one beneath it is filled with exhilaration powerful enough to make him tremble._

_Can this be the reality, a true life? There is no fear here._

_He hungers desperately for more._

_His dream-self howls as it leaps forward to follow the shade into the darkness, but the craving howl mutates in to a stretched scream that continues even after he awakens._

* * *

'Let's cut the crap and get right down to the business,' Nick said sitting down on one of the four sofas set to encircle a rectangular coffee table in the middle of the room. The table was block-like, one of those supposedly futuristic ones, a solid, elongated cuboid with oblong hollows on all sides for shelves. The edges were hard and neat; the surface had nicks and scratches here and there. Someone's cup had left a circular stain on one corner.

Sattar had been staring at that stain until then. He could not name the moment he had began to hate that particular room. He mulled over the expression pondering whether it was an unduly strong one, but he was quick to discard words like 'dislike' and 'contempt' as something not – arduous enough. He hated the room, plain and simple. He hated the fact that there were no curtains, only white standard office blinds that where always closed. He hated the blank colours, the sand of the carpet, the off-white walls, the pale grey acoustic panels as ceiling with dark stains that he suspected were mildew. He hated sitting under them. He had spend too many hours sitting in this room listening operation debriefings and solving problems other people had created. He blamed the room for that too. He could not comprehend why it had to be so dull as a space. Coming to think about it, he would not have called it a room; it was a space, a cavity to room meetings like this one. But there were no regulations demanding dullness.

He had checked that up.

He sighed and recited silently a sutra to return his wandering mind to the present. It was his job to solve and handle problems, to find the solutions and make them work. And it was his job because he had the talent for it. He saw things as they truly were. Other saw dangers, opportunities, advantages and problems; he saw possibilities. He held the job he had because he was the proper talent for it, not because it had been dumped on him. He recited the sutra again, this time with closed eyes, and felt the ill temper slide away. The room was as it was just because it was the way it was. His ill will towards it was because of what entering this room had come to mean for him; He never came here to hear good news. Sattar recited the sutra yet once over and opened his eyes.

It could have been worse. It could have been yellow.

'We have proof that there has been a breach of the Code concernin' the purity of the human genome,' Nick continued. Sattar noticed how Grace's gaze shoot up at this but he turned his attention back to Nick. 'The analysis of the DNA that Grace brought back with her confirms this beyond any doubt. Our DNA has been leaked into humans'.'

Oddly enough, Sattar did not feel surprised by this. Nor did Oji by Sattar's judgement. The burly, darker-than-night man sat relaxed next to Grace. If anything, he seemed thoughtful.

Grace, on the other hand, was dreadfully pale. Sattar knew Nick had ordered her resurfacing a full day in advance of the minimum safety limit. The healing process had clearly been left unfinished, though the tanks could work wonders even in that time. But the early resurfacing had been a tip-off that had led Sattar to expect the improbable. But he felt fear. Things were on the move, shifting, creating a fog of war.

'So, is this – source of Grace's an engineered human or a hybrid?' he asked. They had been tracking the irregularities in the human genome that manifested as the mutants, a human term for them, for years now, but they hadn't had a breakthrough yet. Sattar had had enough time to consider all the possibilities his talent could find. Even this.

Nick glanced at Oji before answering: 'The source is an engineered full hybrid. Half human, half terraformer.'

'Shite,' said Grace, 'but it makes sense.'

Sattar's agreed silently. 'Do we have the terraformer parent?'

This time it was Oji who replied. 'No. The non-human DNA is not from a single source but a combination off our genome. And,' Oji paused to shift his weight, 'there are some alleles present in his DNA that are not from our active genome.'

Grace shot a sharp look at Oji, and Sattar felt how uncertainty stirred inside him.

Oji clasped his hands before continuing. 'Certain parts of the source's genome are from the Archives.'

Sattar had recognised the possibility of this days ago, but odds had been practically nonexistent. 'The Archives?' He turned to stare at Nick. 'Archives? His talents...?'

'Yeah. Who ever made him used soldier DNA.'

Sattar reached to remain mindfully in the moment. This was how this was. The Code had provably been breached. Grace was visibly shaken, but everyone remained silent as if there was nothing to be said. Sattar closed his eyes again. The Code was unbreakable just because they hold it to be so. In its essence it was merely words and agreements that created barriers for their conduct, but nothing stated in it was essentially impossible. It all came down to each individual's will, how one chose to act. Sattar opened his eyes to glance compassionately at Grace. She was, in her own way, old school. She held the Code to be sacred, sometimes clinging on to it so stubbornly, but he thought that with her talent it quite possibly was the most meaningful thing to do. He noted that her hands were trembling.

'This frightens me,' said Oji after it became obvious no-one else was about to end the silence, 'It frightens me terribly.' It frightened Sattar to hear Oji say it. The dark healer stood up, walked around the sofas to the window and opened the shutters, but he only took a quick peek before he closed them again. 'The implications of this frighten me. I fear we have lost the argument with the High Evolutionists and that they have taken action on no-one else's accord but their own.'

'I think,' said Grace with soft tone of acceptance of the unavoidable, 'that the breaching of the Code is not important, not any more now that it's been done. It can't be helped anymore,' she added when everyone else turned to look at her. 'What I fear are the consequences this may have on the human society and the species.'

Nick appeared to be genuinely flabbergasted. 'But, Grace, I thought you –'

'Aye, I know you thought. I know what you're all thinking,' she said interrupting him with irritated shoulders. 'I still think that the Code is at the core of our culture. After we leave home and come out here it is the only thing left of our mothers out here. We leave everything else behind because we have to. Most of us will never return. In fact, very likely none of us will return and even if we do, there will be nothing familiar left if we get back home.'

'There is the Code. Back at home too,' Sattar offered.

'It might be, it might not.' Grace leaned back against the pillows. 'Things change. You know how easily they do. We do what we do because of that fact. I have seeded three planets now. For Oji this is his fifth. Has it ever been the same after you have returned home?'

Oji shook his head. 'No, it has not. That has been the reason for my return out here each time.'

'You see, now?' Grace asked from Sattar. 'We are homeless, in a way at least. We took this journey because we loved the principle of it. We wanted to fill the void with thinking minds and to hear the sounds of other worlds. We thought that the principles named in the Code were important and – holy. We are like those medieval Knight Templars following a calling, a code. Like they in their holy land we are out of place in here, but for us, like for them, returning home does not undo the feeling of homelessness. The holy land they sought after was not in Palestine but somewhere else. The world we are reaching for is somewhere in the future. Maybe. We'll see how it turns out in a hundred millennia.'

'I remember how it was in Jerusalem.' Sattar felt tired. 'And I know what you mean.'

Another stretch of silence threatened to fill the room and Nick was determined to deter it. 'Grace is right.' The others turned their eyes on him. 'This is a shitty situation and it does us no good mullin' over the Code and its metaphysics. Of course there are the principles on which we all, the whole community, have agreed upon and have decided to uphold. I, personally, don't think that the Code is that sacred, but the the process is. We know that this works. We know that a slow, considered pace of evolution is more productive than an enhanced one. But that's now gone down the drain. We know that the appearance of these – mutants is not a natural leap. Had it been, we could have just concentrated on guidin' it and the culture to adjust to it, but know we have to decide if we should do somethin' more.'

Sattar felt a calmness rising. The possibilities were limited though their outcomes were shifty. 'The High Evolutionists have been gaining ground in public opinion. The threat of segregation is strong if we go against them openly.'

'I agree,' Oji said. He scratched the crown of his bald head. 'There are few who are wholeheartedly on their side, but there are many who sympathise with them. They quite likely will support the ideal of the High Evolutionists' out of homesickness.'

'I think we should stop them anyhow,' said Grace sounding like the determination itself. 'The human culture will not stand it if true, mature talents start to pop up.'

'Oh, heavens above, no, it will not. The Inquisition was bad enough.' Oji got up to get a cup of coffee from the side table. 'And those witches were merely small, budding talents. But there is nothing to be done now that their DNA has been corrupted with ours. We cannot undo this. It is too widely spread already. There already are too many manifested talents out there.'

'I thought that there weren't any true talents yet?' Sattar felt surprised. He had trusted the DNA evidence they had gathered from the general population. The possibility was there, naturally, but he had reassured himself that the hard facts were right.

Nick shrugged his shoulders. 'Who knows? There has been some stories going around, but we haven't been able to verify them. I personally know one man who must be a one, I think. He is an unbelievably strong telepath, but who knows. We don't have his DNA.'

'Why not?' Sattar demanded.

'He keeps his distance. I always thought that he would be a natural talent and didn't bother with gettin' a sample since it's about right time genetically for the first mature talents to surface. I guess we should do that too now. He might be a hybrid of some sort too.'

'It is perfectly feasible for there to be more hybrids,' Sattar said after consulting his talent.

'It would seem improbable that this acquaintance of Grace was the only one. There must be others.' Oji drank from his cup. 'But what kind of hybrids would they be? He was enhanced with soldier DNA. Was he build as a weapon? If so, as a weapon for who?'

Oji's questions opened possibilities that were dreadful and Sattar saw that the others were seeing many of them too. If there was indeed soldier DNA at loose amongst the human population, what would follow from that? If someone had the ability to breed soldiers, to build an army out of them? There was a reason why the soldiers existed in the Archives and there was a good reason why they existed only in the Archives.

'There might be at least one other like him.' Grace moved forward to lean her elbows on her knees. She had her knees apart and she carried her shoulders in a manner that communicated strength and an air of masculinity around her. She truly stands between the worlds, Sattar thought while observing her. The grief in her was gone, though he suspected she had it stored in some secret place. He remembered when she had changed her sex into female all those years ago. He could not quite get why. It had always been so much easier to operate as a man in the human society. And she had been born male too.

Nick turned to face her. 'What makes you think so?'

'Six years ago, a few days after I had found him, I saw his face on the telly as a wanted criminal. I looked it up and he seemed to have killed two truck drivers, or something, after he had raped and practically slaughtered a female student. She survived, though I don't know if that's a happy ending after what was done to her. He does have that in him, the urge to kill and maim and more profoundly the ability to do so, but he did not rape that girl, I'm sure of it. Those two men, who ever they were, those he did. I dug up the postmortem examination reports on them and it was his handiwork, literally, mind you. But the girl got done by someone else. There were similarities like the numerous triple cuts and some nuances in the execution, but they weren't his blades that made the cuts. The cuts on the girl were more rugged, like true claws.' She leaned back and sunk into the sofa. 'They had got some semen out of her, but that DNA had mysteriously disappeared from the evidence storage. So, no solid proof, but my gut tells me there is at least someone quite like him out there.'

Nick had gone white and Sattar did not feel much better. There were, at least, two soldiers at large. His talent began to produce possibilities but he shoved them off of his conscious mind and concentrated on the present.

'Grace, Jesus Christ, you never told me,' Nick said sounding angry and terrified at same time. 'You knew?'

'I suspected,' Grace corrected. 'It began to seem probable.'

Nick had became even paler, if possible. 'How exactly did you get his bone marrow DNA? I know you need to delve deep for it.' He paused suddenly. 'It wasn't when he stabbed you, was it, like you told me?'

'No, it wasn't.'

'How did you get to the motel? In the state you were in? You did not have the car.'

Grace avoided Nick's eyes and even Sattar felt a knot of dread in his stomach. 'He drove me.'

'He drove you.'

'Aye.'

'After he had mutilated you? And you let him?'

'I was dead to the world almost literally, you know. Could not make my objection known, really.'

'Did he do somethin' else to you there?' The implication was evident in Nick's voice and in Sattar's mind the possibility was almost absolute. Oji kept his mouth shut, but did not look too concerned. Sattar knew the man always knew more that he let past his lips.

Grace lowered her gaze. 'Aye, he did.' Sattar draw a sharp breath and Nick held his. 'He took care of me. Had he left me out there in the empty lot, I might have died.' Oji let a brief smile break through.

'You would have died,' Oji clarified. 'He had cut out your transponder, so we had no means left to find you in time.'

'Aye, he saved my life, I know that. And that makes our binding through the Code even more serious.'

Nick did not seem much relieved though. 'He took care of you?'

'I told you that over the phone already. He took care of me. He cleaned me up, looked after me while I was out cold healing, got me food.'

'He could have –.'

'He could have but he didn't. He let me live. Again.'

'He is a fascinating man,' Oji observed.

Nick waved him to shut up. 'How did you get the DNA?'

'I had sex with him,' Grace said bluntly.

Nick was clearly taken back but remained silent. In Sattar's mind a new possibility appeared but he chose to keep it to himself. Then Nick got his voice back.

'Okay, fine. You seem to think you can survive anythin'.'

It came Sattar's turn to interrupt. They were getting too far off the subject. 'This other – one, what do we do about that?'

Nick sighed and turned his attention away from Grace as if to ignore her completely. 'Oh, I don't know. This situation is fucked up beyond all recognition.'

Oji stepped in once again. 'I see two important events here. One, someone has been breeding hybrids and two, the adamantium technology has been leaked out. This particular hybrid is, according the rate of mutations in his genome, more than hundred, even two hundred years old, not a recent one then. Therefore he was engineered and bred amongst us and yet remained unknown to us. This seems to point to somewhere high in our organisation. Even more so if there are other hybrids.'

'The adamantium, on the other hand, was not bound on him here.' Sattar said being was quite sure he knew how that one had been played out. 'The technology was given to someone outside who then did it. Had it been done in one of our facilities we would have seen the energy consumption right then.'

'Right,' said Nick with renewed enthusiasm. 'Someone is playin' the humans.'

'But to what end?' Oji inquired.

'To gain power,' Grade suggested. 'It usually is about power.' Lame but true, Sattar thought.

'We have to find out why,' Nick decided. 'And who. It might not even be the High Evolutionists, they too might be played as pawns. And in any case, we don't want the humans to have the technology nor our DNA. They now have the technical ability to breed soldiers and I'm sure they will if they get the chance.' He paused slightly. 'What if these hybrids breed?'

'Logan won't. He is afraid he might sire a child.'

Nick began to say something but then closed his mouth.

Sattar had a further thought on the matter. 'Someone might already be breeding them. Didn't Logan say that he had been held in a some kind of installation? Somewhere where he got his claws?'

'Aye, he thought so, but he has no idea of how long he was in there. Might have been years. I think some sort of a mind washing has been done to him and that takes time to complete. Or it could be an effect of the adamantium being laced on him. What do you think, Oji?'

'Maybe. Our past experiences suggest that the adamantium process can have a strong effect on the subjects' mental state. It is, after all, a considerable trauma even with a soldier's talents. His loss of memory is an exceptional one, though. There were only two mentions of that kind of a side effect in our records and both of those were from the early years of that technology. Since then it has been rather successful. But soldiers are unique in many ways. Their psyche has been designed to withstand pain and desolation. It might well be that Logan's DNA does not include that part of the programming. He is half human.' Oji squinted. 'It also means that he might be fertile,' he added as if an afterthought. The others avoided the subject by taking refuge in a short silence.

'If I was in charge of that facility and project, I would try to breed them.' Grace sounded sad as she said that, but Sattar had to agree.

'True. I would too.'

'Maybe that's how the talents we planted in the human genome got more potent so early on in the evolution,' Nick hypothesised. 'They were breeding the hybrids with humans. And maybe the someone, who ever it was that got this all going, bred with humans too.'

Oji gave the idea some thought. 'It is fairly easy to regain our fertility. Or to use in vitro insemination with some gene therapy. Then one would even be able to choose what parts of our genome were to be included in the human genome. It is, if one has the technology, a reasonably simple process.'

'A fertility clinic would be ideal,' Sattar pointed out. 'You would just add a little something into your clients children.'

'The increase in mutant numbers does correlate with the increasing of fertility treatments over time.'

'Breedin' the soldier hybrids with humans would bring about soldier talents in the offspring but we haven't seen any soldier talents, at least not strong ones, in the general mutant population,' Nick wondered.

'I would keep that group of offspring to myself,' Grace said. 'That would be the product I was aiming for. And anyhow, soldier fertility has always been low. If they were able to reproduce, that would more likely be because of their human side.'

'That is correct.'

A thoughtful silence followed. Sattar's frustration with endless talking was rising its head again and he closed his eyes in order to fight it.

'We have to decide something,' he said after he had failed.

'Yep, we do,' Nick concurred. 'Logan is our best lead on this.'

'Aye, he may lead us on to who ever is mixed up in this. We know there was someone with considerable means hunting him.'

'Yes. Even if there hasn't been much action durin' the last six years, he might still be the best bate we have. We will not bring him in. Let's keep an eye on him instead.' Nick collected his papers. 'Grace, you keep that up. Oji will start research on Logan's DNA for more details. Sattar, you know your game. I will start to dig around the mutant community. I think I'll get in touch with this telepath, Xavier. He has strong ethics, especially concernin' mutants. I think I can get inside through him. And I will get his DNA.'

The meeting was suddenly over and Sattar stood up in order to leave the room. By the door he noticed that Grace and Nick had been left behind and out of a whim he decided to wait in the hallway right next to the open door.

'Grace, watch out for this guy. He is more dangerous that you have thought. Somethin' will happen,' he heard Nick say quietly.

'Something already happened, Nick.' Grace sounded weary.

'He could have raped you.'

'Aye, that's true. But that's nothing new.' Sattar shuddered. 'I've been there too.'

A short silence followed. Then Nick said: 'I know. That is precisely why I'm askin' you to be careful. This guy is not your average thug or mercenary. What he might do is – . He has no boundaries. That's how he has been engineered.'

Sattar heard how Grace sighed. 'I know my soldiers.'

'But you haven't been at the receivin' end.'

'I have seen it. I have been present there.'

'I know that too. But those men were under guidance. He is not. He is a loose cannon and more than that. If he perceives you as a mortal threat, he will deal accordingly.'

'I'm perfectly aware of that!' Her voice rose. 'I know what he is capable of, I have seen and felt it.' She drew a long breath and sounded more composed when she continued. 'He has slain me twice. Even I think it's likely that he will – harm me again, and his violence has a tendency to progress in amount. I don't think we have seen him at his worst yet.'

'Grace, I don't want it to be you who bears witness to that when it happens.'

Grace did not respond immediately. 'I am bound by the Code to him. He is under my jurisdiction and under my protection. He asked me to kill him and I must be there for him if he asks me again. And –' There was a pause.

'And what?'

'I have no fear of him.'

Nick laughed with a short bark. 'You don't fear anythin'.'

'Aye, I do fear. But not him.'

'Well, you should.' Now Nick sounded angry. 'He will rape you.' It sounded like he was trying to scare her.

'I don't know. He might.' Another sigh. 'It might even be that that is something that has to happen.'

'For fucks sake, why?'

'I've been having these dreams about him.' (Sattar thought, in a passing, that that sounded a bit like a line from some cheap romance, but he know what Grace's dreams were like.) 'There is a certain familiarity about him. We are connected somehow, more that just by the Code.'

'Told you that you two have met before. In Nam, remember.'

'I remember. It's something else. He seems more familiar.'

'And because of that you should – take your chances with him?'

Grace didn't answer. Nick waited for awhile and then walked out. Sattar made no effort to hide his presence outside the door, and Nick gave him a murdering look on the passing. Sattar shrugged it off and went back in. Grace was peering through the shutters with her back turned towards the door.

'Nick is right, you know.'

Grace looked up at him in surprise but said nothing when she saw that it was him. Sattar remained by the door for some time offering his presence to her if she needed it, but she sat down on one of the sofas in stubborn silence. Eventually Sattar gave up and left.


	6. 12: Circles of Influence

**12. Circles of Influence**

Logan fucked the woman single-mindedly. Most of his attention was on the sensations, only a small, survivalist section of his intellect was focused on the larger world. He hadn't had a good fuck in ages. Last two months had been spent on an oil rig in the north and he had grown so tired of the closed quarters that he had sworn that to be the first and last time on that particular job. The same day he had got back in town, he had taken on the first willing looker in the bar and had headed back to the one-room flat he had rented.

He had her propped on the kitchen counter with her legs bound around his hips and her bare heels resting crossed over his buttocks, but the edge of the counter got in the way when he pushed into her. He tried to move her ass slightly over the edge and closer to him but the loss of firm footing made her tense up and unintentionally fight him. Logan cursed under his breath and lifted her up pushing all the way in and carried her over the table. He pushed her down, ass over the edge and grabbed her waist with both hands. The stance was better here. He watched how her breasts moved in rhythm with him and he leaned over to seize one into his hand. That made her sit half way up leaning on her elbows. He leaned over too and sucked her nipple into his mouth. She moved to kiss him, but he pulled her head back and bit and suck the side of her throat. He didn't break the skin but the taste of blood filtered through. He growled, felt how his erection stiffened and filled up ahead of the orgasm. She squealed under him, arching to meet him and orgasmed – faked, he could tell but could not have cared less.

He came aware of the knock on the door while he was still indulging himself with the woman's warmth. He straightened up while keeping up the motion and watched her push her hands against her abdomen in pleasure. The knocking continued.

'Fuck off!' The knocking ceased and he grunted happily. He considered picking her up and continuing to the bed. Maybe he would let her sleep a bit before the next round. The knocking resumed. He tried to ignore it, picked her up again never pulling out of her and walked over to the bed. He knelt down on the mattress and laid her down, but the knocking picked up an insisting tone and his rage flared.

'I said, fuck off!' he yelled and stormed towards the door leaving the woman baffled on the bed. 'Fuck off, you hear me! I ain't gonna tell you –.' His hand was already on the handle and he was about to yank the door open when he smelled earth and horses. He hesitated for a split second before he tore the door open to stand stark naked in front of Grace.

'Hi ya,' she said, smiling. 'Full monty, eh?'

He saw her run her eyes over the length of his body and he stood there to be watched. He didn't mind people seeing him naked as a rule, partly because he himself was acutely aware of the fact that everyone is naked under the clothing they wear. He could always smell the skin and flesh beneath the fabrics. He was always aware of the other people's odours: their sweat, the perfumes, dandruff, groins; the medication they were taking, the food they had eaten the day before. He knew that that dish he had been fucking was on the pill (he preferred chicks on the pill). Clothing, in his mind, was fundamentally a practical matter.

The other reason he didn't mind to be seen naked was because he knew how people looked at him when he was naked. He thought he knew how they saw him. It was a form of control for him, a form of display for dominance, one of intimidation, one that he won. He could have grabbed a towel on his way to the door and for that split second, the instant he had smelled that it was Grace behind the door, he had considered returning to get it, but the urge to display himself and the situation had won. And so he stood there naked, still sweating from the sex, smelling of sex (he knew she would catch that) and still aroused. He smiled crookedly at her.

'Why? You wanna join in?' He stepped aside as an invitation for her to enter, but only so much that she would have to squeeze through between him and the door, so close that she would submit herself into a contact with him. She did not but moved him firmly aside on her the way through. He wanted to resist her pushing palm open on his shoulder but his body yielded to her will without a fight. It made him snarl at her.

'I'll pass, thank you very much,' she said as she stepped in. He shut the door and followed her in to stand still right behind her back. His arousal made his skin sensitive to the warmth radiating from her body and her scent filled his nostrils but Grace didn't seem to mind his propinquity. She unzipped her coat, the same old air force blue one, and flashed a smile at the woman in his bed. 'Hi to you too. I'm sorry to interrupt. I'll just have a quick word with him and then I will leave you two to it, okay.' The woman in his bed looked utterly confused, and Grace turned back towards him.

Logan kept his eyes locked to hers. He felt her breath on him, felt how the scar in his neck began to throb. He remembered the night he had had sex with her and he suddenly caught himself regretting that he had not returned to the same bed with her. He snarled at himself but did not move away from her.

_It's never the same afterwards._

'What do you want?' He kept his tone low, he didn't want the dish to hear him. 'Didn't you have enough last time?' He raised his hand and run the backside of his right hand fingers smoothly over her jaw and down the side of her throat. Something flashed over her eyes, but she didn't budge. He let his hand fall back down on a course along her breast. She smiled and he realised that she looked younger: the thin lines radiating from the corners of her eyes were gone. It made him cautious: _It might not be her._ He inhaled deeply trying to determine by her scent whether or not she was an impostor. All he got was the familiar mixture of earth and horses and the surprise of her not being aroused by his presence. He inhaled through his teeth, grabbed her by her hair and kissed her intently licking in her taste and scent. He heard the chick in his bed draw in a short, sharp breath, how she stood up and walked over with a demanding stride. It amused him and he made his motions more calculated, more charged. He finished the kiss only after he was sure that what he tasted was Grace. He pulled away, halted mere inches away from her face and smiled as he wiped her lips with his thumb. There was something in the way she tasted that he liked. She repaid his gaze with calmness.

'Suit yourself, darlin'.' He let his voice rumble softly in his chest. 'You know what you're missin' out on.' He took a hold of Grace's shirt hem and pulled it up to expose her abdomen and left flank. The scars were gone. He run his finger tips across her skin and it was smooth, unblemished and perfect.

His last act was too much for the lady in waiting. She pushed her body in between him and Grace, shoulders against his chest, buttocks pressing on his groin as she faced Grace.

'Forget her. Who is she anyway.' She moved her ass slowly from side to side; he couldn't remember her name. The chick's movements burned in his groin, but he kept his eyes on Grace.

'To you, no-one,' he replied. Grace simply stood there, patiently, in front of them with a smile hovering on the corners of her mouth. Lust rippled along his spine and he swallowed the saliva building up in his mouth. The redhead on his skin turned to face him.

'Get rid of her, then,' she murmured but with a voice strong enough for Grace to hear. He looked down on the chick but then back at Grace. 'I don't think we're done yet,' the woman continued while sliding her hand down his abdomen. That made his breathing deeper and he leaned slightly closer into the woman. He kept his hands relaxed on his sides, refusing to touch her, looking at Grace. The chick reached his pubic hair.

'I'm not done with you yet,' she whispered and wrapped her hand around him. 'You're mine tonight.' She released him, reached up and pulled his head down by his hair, kissed him on the lips lustily, grinding her flesh on his.

Grace held her breath as did he. The heat in his groin flared up into a burning in his shoulders. The woman kept on kissing him with her fingers tangled up in his hair, pulling at him, urging him on, tying him to her. He had learned long a go not to fight against pressure but to give into it, to move with it. He seized the woman by her throat and pushed her away forcing her to stand on her toes. Her face disappeared, got distorted in his mind. Her hair seemed darker, longer, twisting, and he hated her. She tricked a taste of a memory in him, a memory of sharp pain, removal. The loss of something.

_'Take it on trust.'_

'You don't own me. I don't need you, darlin',' he hissed at her face. She clawed at his fingers drawing blood. _No-one tells me what to do. Not even you._ 'I am done with you.' Before he had time to push the dish away for good, she kicked him in his groin. He kept holding her while the pain made him growl as he buckled under it. He transferred some of the agony onto the woman, squeezing his fingers closer together around her throat. His righthand claws broke the skin.

Someone called out his name and he felt a hand wrap around his rising right hand, felt skin pressing against the tips of his claws that had just broke his skin.

'Logan, put her down.'

_Not even you._

'You don't get to tell me what to do,' he barked in return. The woman in his grip kept clawing at his hand and arm. The scrapes healed as fast as she produced them. The pressure of blood pulsed in his head.

_I belong to no-one. No-one owns me._

'Let her go, Logan.'

He threw the woman away and whirled around to take on Grace.

He realised he was panting, panting like a dog, growling. The claws in both of his hands were now partly unsheathed. Grace took a step towards him.

'Get your stuff, now,' she said to someone behind his back. 'Get your stuff and get out, now.' He heard someone scramble about somewhere beyond his field of vision.

'Good girl,' Grace said reassuringly, 'Walk to the door, slowly. Do not run.' He heard steps and he began to turn his head towards to the sound.

'Logan.'

He snapped his attention back to Grace.

'Let her go. It's me you're after.'

Grace was walking towards him. The steps behind him reached the door. He let them go.

'You,' he said at Grace, 'I'm not finished with you.'

He smelled her blood, smelled the wounds on her. Smelled him on her. Smelled the grass. The room got darker, somehow. Distant. Distant sounds of cars passing by. Blood all over him. On his hands. He looked down at his hands and his abdomen. _Where's the blood?_ he thought. He looked up and at Grace who was standing at the feet of the bed, looking at him. Calm. Calm. He looked at his hands again. No blood. No blood at all. _There should be blood._ And then she. Calm. Calm. Calm.

_She's not afraid of me,_ he remembered. She held his stare for a moment, then bend down to straighten the bed spread before sitting down on the mattress. He heard the springs move under her weight as he looked down at his body again. No blood. Nothing. Clean. He was clean.

He let the rage die. He muscles relaxed and he realised that his claws we now fully extended. He withdrew them winching involuntarily at the pain and straightened his back. His neck was stiff and he twisted his head to the right to relieve the tension. Grace waited in silence.

Logan sat down on the well worn armchair facing the bed. The upholstery had lost its velvety feeling and the exposed raw canvas was uncomfortable against his bare skin.

'You're ok?' asked Grace quietly. Logan thought that she did seem concerned.

'I'm fine.' He kept his legs apart and his arms spread on the arm rests. He was hot and sweaty, but the adrenalin was already giving way to a cooler breeze moving over his body. He knew the posture was imposing. He let his head fall back for full exposure. He waited a while before looking again at her.

'What the fuck do you want?'

Grace flashed a quick smile as if nothing had happened. 'I need to talk to you, like I said. There's been a development.'

'Is that so, darlin'.' He hoped he sounded unconcerned enough. He kept his posture though he felt tired. He wanted to sleep. 'What happened to your skin? Did you pay some skin doctor to get rid off the scars I cut onto you?'

Grace flinched ever so slightly at that. Most people would have missed it entirely but his senses caught the movement. That same sharpness of perception he had learned to count on.

'No. I was healed.'

'How?'

Grace hesitated. She lowered her gaze and looked at her palms. He remembered how she had reacted to his questions about the sword.

'How?' he demanded. Graze glanced up at the door.

'There's something you need to know, Logan, something about yourself.'

He had time, he reminded himself. _No need to push it. Take your time. One step at a time. Follow it through._ 'No kiddin', darlin'? Did you figure that one out all by yourself?'

He smelled sadness on her before she spoke.

'Last time, in the motel, I took a sample of your DNA.'

The almost forgotten wedge inside his heart buried a little further in. _'Take it on trust.'_ He leaned forward. 'You did what?'

'We analysed it. We wanted to know what you are.'

'We?' He stood up, loomed over her. 'Who the fuck is we?' Then it hit him. '_What_ I am? You wanted to know _what_ I am?'

The world of things seemed paralysed for awhile.

'Aye, what you are. We wanted to know what you are.' Her voice was heavy and she looked past him. 'And we know now.'

He lost himself. The body didn't feel like his but a foreign entity, something out of sync with the mind captured inside it. He sat down again. 'I'm a mutant, a freak of fuckin' nature. I know that.' He tried to console himself with that. _I already know what she's about to tell me. She won't take me by surprise._ 'I already know what I am. I want to know who I am.'

She reached over to touch him on his knee. 'Oh, Logan, mo caraid, I don't know who you are.

But I can tell you what you are.'

'I know what I am,' he said stubbornly, 'I'm a mutant.'

'It's not that simple. You're much more.'

_'You are so much more, Wolverine, much more than what you used to be.'_ He shook the voice off his mind.

Logan stormed up and in her face. 'Who are _you_? Who are you to know what I am?' his spat the words at her face. '_What_ are _you_? I know you're not a mutant. _You_ don't smell like a mutant, you smell like a human and you can still pull off all this weird shit.' He pulled back from her as the thought fully dawned at him. 'What the fuck are _you_?' He poked his finger at her chest, hard, knowing it would cause pain. 'You're not human either, are you?' He felt how a remembered water, a tepid liquid rose to his ankles, crept higher, twining around his calves. _It was the water that changed me_, he remembered, _I was different after I got out._

'Logan,' she said sitting calmly on the bed, looking sad, unthreatening, 'I am human – I am what the humans in time will be, and you are not a mutant, not as such.'

'What the fuck do you mean? Not a mutant as such. What the hell does that mean? What other kinds are there supposed to be?'

'You. And others.'

'Okay, fine, what the hell.' He was scared but he'd be damned if he would let her see it. 'Let's have it your way, then. What am I, darlin'? Tell me, what the fuck am I?' He swung his arms open to underline the question. 'What is,' waved at his naked body, 'all this?'

'You are a result of genetic engineering, Logan.'

For a moment he simply stood there. _'You are my masterpiece, Wolverine.'_ 'What the hell is that supposed to mean?'

'You were manufactured, Logan. You were made to measure.' She looked at his eyes. 'I'm sorry.'

His nervousness burst out as laughter though he wanted to be laughing out of relief. The laughter died a way but he kept the smirk on his face. She seemed unmoved. Logan inhaled and closed his eyes for a bit before looking at his arm. He let the claws come out slowly, steadily from between his knuckles meaning every ounce of menace contained within the act. 'I was made to measure, darlin'. I know that already.' He turned the hand around and opened his fingers to see the palm of his hand. _'Your life is in your hands.'_ 'Isn't that much pretty obvious.' He extended the arm towards her, closed his fist and turned his hand once again around turning it into a threatening gesture as the claws and his knuckles faced her. 'I want to know what I was before this.'

'This,' she said as she touched one of the claws pinching it between her thumb and forefinger and slid them along the blade's sides. 'This is an augmentation. It's not even a weaponisation. An upgrade, perhaps, but you were a product of genetic engineering even before that.' She stood up and stepped over to him. 'You were never a natural thing, Logan. You were made to measure from the start.'

Logan thought she sounded like she wanted to frighten him with the facts. 'You're saying I was bred?'

'Aye.'

'Purpose bred?'

'On purpose, aye.'

He pulled his arms close to his sides. 'For what purpose?'

'As a weapon.'

'To slaughter,' he said filling in what was she had left unsaid.

She held her breath before answering and turned her face away from him before she did: 'That is one use of weapons, yes.'

_That's what I do. It's what I'm best at._

The sweat on him had dried and the skin on his sides felt sticky against the undersides of his upper arms. He looked at his biceps. He was sturdy, well-build. He rarely trained but he still stayed pretty much in shape. He did gain muscle from practice and he did loose some if he put his feet up for month or two, but not much. He had thought that it was because of his mutation. He squeezed his fist close tightly and followed how the muscles in his arm bulked under his skin. He was hairy, very hairy though not abnormally so; he had seen fellows as hairy as him and some even hairier. It wasn't like he had fur, just hair all over, but putting two and two together he had thought himself to be one of those feral mutants, mutants with animal-like qualities. Now she was saying that he wasn't.

_I was built, put together. Engineered. Manufactured._

_But I was born. I must've had a mother._

His skin felt sticky.

'I'm gonna take a shower.'

'I'll wait,' he heard her reply as he shut the bathroom door behind him.

* * *

I was half through the ancient copy of Reader's Digest I had found lying in a pile of newspapers on the table before Logan was done washing the world away from his system – and the smell of sex from his skin, I would imagine. He left the bathroom door open when he was done to help to vent the moisture and walked over to the window and pushed it slightly open to create a draft that would suck the steam out even faster. A slow stream of traffic scrabbled past the building and the sound of the city crawled in. I kept on reading to give him the space he needed.

He had emerged from the bathroom in his jeans with the buttons undone and the hairs on his back still slightly damp. I got through several pages before he stopped staring out of the window and came to stand close to me behind the armchair. I kept on reading. He felt like wall behind me. I waited leaning in on the pressure his presence created. He felt comfortable standing a feet or so behind me, not only comfortable to me but comfortable for him to be standing there, at ease though deep in thought. I finished the article and begun to read the next one, a piece on some dramatic survival story full of amazing luck and heroism.

He stepped closer after six or seven pages. I had my hair open and I felt his fingers move along my shoulder and neck as he pushed his hand underneath my hair. I put the copy down.

'I like your scent,' he said and left his hand rest around my neck with his thumb stroking ever so softly the skin below my ear.

'My scent? Most people would say they like the way someone smells, don't they?'

'How would I know. I'm not like most people. The way you smell is different from your scent. And I like your scent.' He pushed his hand further up into my hair bending my head slightly forward. 'I liked the way she smelled, hot and willing, but I prefer your scent.'

'What's the difference?' I wanted to know more of the way he experienced the world. With his senses everything had to be so different. 'What's the difference between smell and scent?'

He leaned closer and sniffed my hair. 'Smells change. Fear, lust, love, rage, sleep, foods eaten, illnesses, all that changes all the time. Scent is more stable. I can recognise people by their scent. Their smell tells me what they're up to.'

'Is that why you kissed me at the door?'

He chuckled softly. 'Smart girl, Greinne, smart girl. I had to be sure it was you and the best way to get someone's scent is by tastin'.' He grabbed my hair and twisted my head around to him. His lips where soft. 'I'd know your taste from anythin',' he said smiling cunningly before straightening up again. His hand kept on caressing my neck.

'I always though that I was abused by whoever put this shit in me,' he said after awhile, softly. 'I've always known someone made me but I thought had lived a regular life before that. But,' he continued as he brushed his fingers higher up into my hair, 'if I was engineered from the start, if I was a product, then where's the abuse?' He pulled his hand down and followed my spine with his fingers. 'I was born to be someone's property.'

Somehow his line of thinking didn't seem honest but more like a way of digging for information. It suited me just fine. 'The children of slaves are born as someone's property,' I reminded him, 'and if anything, their whole existence is abuse. The fact that you were made means nothing as such.' Maybe he was being honest. I tried to delve gently into him to get a sense of his mental state but he used his adamantium to push me out.

'Don't try that, darlin'. I know how to keep you out now,' he said squeezing my neck, 'and I don't want to – .' He left the sentence unfinished as he pulled his hand away. I turned half way around to see him. He buttoned up his jeans and buckled his belt before looking down on me, and I got the impression that he was doing that in the both senses of the word.

'You're right,' he said, 'but slaves are born humans. If you're tellin' the truth here, I was manufactured.'

I adjusted my pose to fit more comfortably in the chair. He looked calm.

'Bulldogs were bred to fight bulls but now they are pets like any dog. Times change, things loose their original purpose and find new meanings.'

'So I'm a dog now, a pet?' He smiled under dark eyes but did not laugh.

'I'm sorry, that was a bad analogy,' I said and turned my back to him. He remained somewhere in my peripheral vision.

'I told you not to feel sorry for me.' He stepped around the armchair, grabbed it by the armrests and dragged it with me in it closer to the bed where he sat down facing me. There he lost the momentum and fell into staring at the floor.

'Logan, listen, we don't know who engineered you, not even when you were made. Your regenerative ability makes it impossible to tell.'

'I can't be that old, can I? Maybe I was born in that place I escaped from, the one where they put the metal in me? I know that military technology can be years ahead of civilian tech but genetic engineering, hell, that's science fiction. Even today.'

'I, actually, think that you are rather old,' I said. I didn't even wish to tell him how wrong he was about the technology. 'I did first meet you just before the Vietnam war, long before your adamantium claws, remember?'

He looked up at me. 'If that's so then I was not engineered, right? Was I a some kind of a test tube kid, an egg fertilised and then showed into some poor woman's womb?' A shadow seemed to sit down on his shoulder and he leaned in to grab my left arm. 'Or was she inseminated like a cow? Or was she covered by some suitable – fuckin' – stud.' He looked disgusted with the words he had chosen. I knew he was thinking about himself, his fear of being capable of rape. He was twisting my arm painfully but unintentionally.

'Who knows the exact method.' We do, I thought, but left it unsaid. I wasn't about to tell him the whole truth. There had been an embryo built from selected pieces of suitable genomes, inserted into an unknown birthing mother. 'We don't even know who did it.' At least that much was true.

He stared at me for a moment, looked then at his hand holding my arm and letting it suddenly go with a startled twitch. His grip left red bruises. Logan stood up and walked away to close the window. I lift my arm to have a closer look at the damage.

Logan sat again on the bed. I glanced at him but turned my attention back on my arm twisting the elbow inwards to check the underside of my arm. I was about to have his handprint around my upper arm for awhile. I let the arm back down but he caught my hand the halfway down and pulled it towards himself firmly but gently. His other hand took hold of my elbow.

'It's fine,' I said as he examined the bruising himself, 'It'll soon be gone.' He payed no attention to my words but took his time without a reply. I watched his neck and shoulders as he gently moved my arm about to get the full picture. He still wore his hair as a longish mane. He let my arm go when he was satisfied but did so gently, resting it on the armrest. He leaned his elbows on his knees and rubbed the lefthand knuckles. He sighed and looked up.

'So you can heal yourself,' he said looking tired.

'I can but not as good – or fast – as you can.'

He nodded. 'Is that a part of my,' he paused to search for an expression, 'weapon character?'

'Aye, it is,' I admitted. He flashed a wry smile before pushing the hair back from his forehead.

'I can see how that comes handy in combat.' His eyes took on a darker shade of brown. 'I have seen how it comes handy.'

He sat in silence for awhile but kept looking at me.

'You had scars before,' he said suddenly, 'How come, if you can heal yourself, you had scars before but now they're gone?'

I knew I was screwed.

* * *

Logan watched Grace squirm in her seat. He smiled and pulled her armchair even closer, so close that her knees came in contact with the bed between his legs. Her scent enveloped him as he intruded into her personal space. He turned her face towards the light by her jaw.

'Six years ago,' he said moving her head slightly from side to side, 'you had small lines around your eyes.' He let her head go. 'Now they're gone too. That's interestin', darlin'. You got younger. How's that possible? I don't age but I don't get younger.' He lifted his chin thoughtfully. Grace looked reserved. He looked at her knees between his thighs. 'Know what I've been thinkin'?' he said and wrapped his hands around the sides of her lower thighs just above her knees. 'If I was engineered then the genetic material used to build me must've come from somewhere, right? Any ideas, Greinne?' he asked and looked up at her. She looked even more reserved with the smell of concern emanating from her skin. He knew she was hiding something. She wasn't actually lying to him, she just wasn't telling him everything. He could smell it. 'Anythin'? No? Not a clue?' He smirked contently at her.

Logan stood up and went to get a long-sleeved T-shirt from his closet. Grace stayed in her chair. 'I think the DNA came from you.' Grace turned her ear slightly more towards him but did not look directly at him.

'From me?'

Logan returned to sit on the bed in front of her with the shirt still in his hand. 'Not you, personally. You, who ever you lot are.' Grace did not let a single expression slip across her face. Logan found himself to be unsure on how to proceed. He knew he could, now that he knew how to keep her out of him, force answers from her, but he knew he would have to resort to extreme means. She would not be intimidated by him and their conversation by the pool had revealed to him that torture by pain would probably be pointless. She apparently had been through that before, and she didn't fear death. Most torture victims were easy second targets with their memories but she – probably not. He wouldn't bet his money on that being a success. And besides, torture, if you had to go beyond mere threats, was a fucked-up way of getting information. Everybody lied. Even him.

He straightened his back and put the shirt on.

He didn't know what to do with her. He wanted the information. He took hold of her knees, put his palms and fingers under her thighs and waited for an idea to form. _You have time, all the time you need._

There was a warmness radiating through his hands. It rose up his wrists and seeped deeper into his arms. He felt the muscles of his arms bath in the comfort of the warmth, felt how they relaxed, quietly. He felt the tiny cavities left between the individual muscles, felt the smoothness of the membranes around the muscles. He closed his eyes as the warmth reached the adamantium. The sensation made him exhale in pleasure.

_'It'll be fine. You'll be fine. Afterwards. Take my word for it. Trust me. You can take it. You can take it.'_

He snarled, aloud. The muscles in his neck tightened as a reaction to a forgotten danger and he grabbed Grace by the jacket. 'No,' he barked, 'you don't get to do that anymore.' He pulled her up and threw her on the floor without letting go of her jacket. He fell with her landing on her but got on to his feet quickly dragging her up with him. 'You don't get to do that anymore,' he repeated spitting at her face. She stared at him, body sluggish with its weight supported mainly by his hands. 'You don't get to do that anymore,' he said once more, more quietly this time, 'Ever.' He let the claws slither out. They were still slightly warmer than usually.

_'You can take it. You're perfect.'_

'I think you were engineered to take the adamantium,' he heard her say. He looked at her and saw that she too was looking at the claws. Her hand rose up and she touched one of the claws with her fingers. 'Adamantium is poisonous to most humans on long term. And it has to be applied on the bones of the recipient as liquid. Once it hardens it's virtually indestructible. You were right, that night. It was because you were perfect but you were not chosen. You were made.'

He watched as she wrapped her fingers around a claw, slowly and with caution. Something bundled up in his belly. He kept looking at her fingers now enveloping the claw tightly.

'You were right, I am not perfect,' he heard her say, 'I do scar. And I can't heal myself that quickly.' Something in her voice compelled him to turn his eyes at hers. She smiled at him and then slid her hand swiftly along the claw. He felt how the edge of his claw cut into her fingers and he let her go. The bundle in his belly tightened up and moved up into his chest pressing against his sternum. It was a strange feeling, an odd kind of panic as he saw blood ooze through the fingers of her fist. He looked at his hand, at the claws. The one between his index finger and the middle one was coloured in red. _Her._ He felt sick.

He saw the blood dribble down the softly gleaming silver and his eyes followed as the droplets begun to fall to the floor. It was then that he heard the sound of larger drops hitting the floor and he looked back up. Grace just stood there. Her hand was squeezed into a tight fist but she had let it fall to her side where it kept bleeding on the floor. She appeared sad as she looked at him.

The smell of her blood got to his nose and made the taste of bile rise up in his throat.

_I will not throw up._

The blood continued to dribble on the floor beginning to form a small puddle beside her feet. He watched as it creeped closer to the sole of her boot. _She can heal herself_, he thought, reassuringly. His hands felt cold but he didn't dare to withdraw the claws: he did not want to have her blood enter him with the steel. _It'll stop any moment now. When she heals herself._ He turned his eyes away from the blood and looked at her instead. He waited. Grace accepted his gaze and remained where she was, two, three feet away from him. She looked calm with her pulse steady as he eavesdropped on its beat. He glanced at the floor again. The dribble from her fingers was now a steady trickle showing no sings of slowing down.

Logan gave up. He turned his back to her and went to the bathroom where he rinsed and washed the now sticky blood from his claw before drawing them in. The pain made him close his eyes. He dried his hands on a clean towel and he took it with him as he returned to the room. Her hand was still bleeding and he had to push against the smell of blood as he walked closer to her. For a moment he stood in front of her staring into her eyes as a challenge but she held her gaze leaving him no other choice but to take a hold of her damaged hand. He coaxed her fingers apart while ignoring the taste of bile in his throat and the coldness around his spine. The cut run across the upper part of her palm, just under the base of her fingers, and the flesh gaped open revealing what he feared was the bones. Blood kept pouring out and showed no signs of coagulation. It was amazing how quickly the blood flowed from the wound to fill up the cup of her palm. He pressed the towel against the wound and wrapped his hand around hers to keep pressure on it.

'Grace, you have to let it heal.' He kept the grip tight. He felt something under his bare foot and realised, as he looked down, that he had stepped into the blood. He cursed.

'Help me sit down,' Grace said. Logan lift his wet foot. He balanced on the other one and managed to wipe most of the blood away with the loose end of the towel as Grace supported him with her good arm. He kept her damaged one elevated and walked her back to the armchair. She held on to both of his hands as she eased herself down. The bloodstain on the towel kept on growing slowly. It baffled him. Why didn't she make the bleeding stop like she had set his years ago?

'Logan, can I trust you?'

Logan didn't know what to answer. The towel was getting wetter. _She ought to heal herself._ 'Why?'

* * *

I didn't know if he meant why I wanted to know if I could trust him or why should I trust him.

'Remember when I healed the cut in your neck after it didn't stop bleeding?' I asked. Logan looked reserved but nodded anyhow. 'I can do that to myself too, but with more serious damage, like my hand here,' I shifted my hand slightly but he resisted the movement and gave me a stern look, 'with these kinds of wounds, if I want them to heal properly, that's not enough by itself.'

'So we need to get you to a hospital?' He sounded concerned and unwilling.

'No.' I sighed. 'You asked what has happened to my scars.' He nodded again. 'Like you said, I can heal myself but it's not as good an ability as yours. You heal automatically, instantly, but I don't. I have to make it happen if I want it to be any faster than the natural rate.'

'I kinda figured that out by myself.' He adjusted his grip on my hand and frowned when he saw how much blood there was in the towel. 'It doesn't explain the scars.'

'If I have to heal fast, I have to choose between it and scarring. If I heal quickly I will have the scars.'

He squinted his eyes looking thoughtfully at me. 'All the scars I saw on you where combat wounds,' he said and sat finally down on the bed again keeping my hand elevated above my heart. 'But now they're gone.'

'I can heal scars if I take the time and effort. You, and the adamantium, left me in such a mess that it took days to fully heal and recover.' I didn't mention about the tank and Oji. For him the tank was not a device of healing, and I didn't want to make things any more complicated. 'The scars got healed then.'

Logan had still his reservations. 'Why hadn't you healed them before?'

I closed my I eyes for a second. 'I needed the reminder.' Logan had a questioning look when I looked at him again. 'They got healed as a side effect. My healing after –,' I almost said you but managed to bit my tongue, 'The damage was so extensive that it was less trouble to heal everything without trying to figure out what was necessary and what wasn't. So, the scars got taken care of too.'

'A side effect, right.'

I needed his trust if I was to keep an eye on him. 'I want to show you how I heal without scarring.' Logan stared at me unmoved. Something in his pose made me uncomfortable and I shuffled my weight around as I steered clear of his eyes. 'But I need to delve inwards for that.'

'Delve?' He had that annoyed frown on his brow.

'You remember how I died on you back at the cottage?' That made him sneer, but he said nothing. 'And how I located those soldiers later?'

'Yeah. So?'

'And how I,' I paused to find a suitable word, ' – highjacked your body?'

That made him give me a look darker than coal. 'Yeah,' he said almost growling, 'I do.'

'All those were outward delves. Situations where I reached outside of myself, beyond me, I suppose. But if I want to heal myself I have to reach inwards, into me.'

Logan thought about what I had said. 'Sounds like bullshit to me but I'll take your word for it. So?'

I looked at my hand. The fingers felt cold and the towel was soaked. I could not let it keep on bleeding much longer. 'When I delve inwards I loose the connection with the world, sort of pass out. I can't hear or anything.' I though for a moment. 'You could say it's kind of coma.'

'So you can't react to what happens around you, right? Not like you could if you did – delve outwards?'

I smiled: he remembered the stunt he had pulled at the cottage. 'Aye, I can't. Well, I can, actually, but it takes time to get my wits back so I can't risk it in combat. I have to be in a safe place.'

Logan checked on my hand. He had a baleful smile on his face when he turned his attention back to me. 'So, if you try to heal your hand here,' he said, 'you'd be at my mercy.'

'Aye, I would be.'

The smile died away. His eyes got darker, deeper somehow. It had been a long while since I had last seen the hound in him. He pulled my hand down and opened my fingers. He looked at the open wound and rubbed my fingers gently. He put the towel back on and squeezed my hand in his.

'Yeah, you can trust me,' he said softly and turned to look at me. His eyes where reserved but warm. 'Go ahead. Do you need somethin'?' I knew his curiosity had won over his suspiciousness.

'Keep an eye on me, will you? Put a blanket on me if my temperature drops. And don't get scared if I seem unresponsive. I'll be fine. It'll be fine. It's just a part of the process. I'll be fine afterwards. Don't worry about it.' I let my consciousness fall back as I said that. I smiled at him and closed my eyes as the image of him began to blur. I leaned back. 'Take the towel off. Watch. It'll be just fine.'

* * *

_'You'll feel magnificent afterwards. You'll come out of it as something new, a superior being.'_

Grace went limp in the chair. All the natural tension left her body so suddenly and so completely that it seemed as if someone had cut the strings of a puppet. Her head fell forward and he almost lost the hold on her hand. He waited for a while, not quite sure why, then grabbed her by the breast of her jacket and hauled her over onto the bed. He moved her around a bit adjusting her into the recovery position leaving her cut hand straight with the palm open and upwards. It still bled, but he let it be. If she truly could do what she claimed then little blood was nothing. He stood up and looked down at her. She seemed okay there with her left hand under her cheek. He run his eyes down her form.

_Well. It's all up to you now, darlin'._

His gaze halted at her boots and he decided to remove them. She had the laces tied with double knots. He pulled the shoes off and placed them side by side at the side of the bed. He folded the bedspread over her feet, then continued up along her body wrapping up every inch of her to keep her warm. He remembered the hypothermia from the last time. He checked the result tucking the spread a bit further in under her here and there. His hands moved a touch slower where he wrapped the fabric around her hips. He let his fingers pause where they had pushed the hem deeper under her hips feeling the weight of her body on them.

_I wouldn't mind gettin' in bed with you again, though, girl._

The thought popped into his head unannounced. He cleared his throat and escaped over to the dining table to get a chair to sit in at her side so that he could watch the wound heal but the nervousness the thought had brought up did not disperse. He turned the chair around and sat down astride with his elbows on the wooden back rest. He kept his eyes purposefully on her palm. The bleeding had stopped. He got up again and went to get a rag. He wiped the quietly clotting blood away, carefully, trying to avoid rubbing away what scab may had formed.

The wound looked clean, clean-cut. She had applied just the right amount of pressure for his claw to cut thought the muscle and other tissues in her palm but still light enough for the claw to keep from slicing though the bones. Logan could see the tendons, some of which were cut too, but nothing seemed to be happening apart from the now ceased bleeding. He looked at his own palm thinking about all his wounds he had seen closing right in front of his eyes.

_She said it would be slow._ He rested his chin on his forearm like a dog resolved to wait until his master was ready. _She'll get there._

_She will._

Her face was peaceful and he took full use of the opportunity to study her features. He looked for the thin lines around the corner of her eyes even when he knew they were gone and he tried to remember the colour of her eyes but failed there too. He thought they were brown, brown like her hair, dark to point of being almost black but not quite.

He picked his head up. _Who cares._ He rushed up to grab a beer from the fridge. He tossed the cap on the counter and went to sit in the armchair at the end of the bed. He took a sip and sighed. Her scent blended with the aroma of his artisan beer with which he indulged himself regularly. He inhaled thoroughly to draw it all in and his nose found his own scent wrapping around hers. He took a gulp, closed his eyes and pictured the redhead he had been with when Grace had appeared at his door. He reminisced about the form of the chick's body, conjured up the curve of her ass under his hands. He tried to remember her smell, her arousal. He inhaled trough his teeth.

_He turned his head around to see a riot of red hair behind him. There was a smell, a scent. Spicy, some would call it. Pleasing to him, bit like cinnamon. He chuckled at this thinking it too perfect to the point of being in danger of being artificial. He began to turn around, to face her, reaching for her but she moved away saying something he didn't quite catch. The woman, whoever she was, moved away from him and dissolved into darkness. He tried to follow her but now he was tethered down on a slab, unable to move with the coldness of steel pressing under him. The scent of something like cinnamon lingered._

His lungs gasped for air. The scent of cinnamon always made him sick. Except in that hallucination. In it it aroused him.

Grace was still unconscious on the bed. _As she ought to be._ Logan gulped down a mouthful of his beer and stood up. He zeroed in on her pulse, caught its rhythm and counted the beats to be slightly under thirty per minute. Her breathing was equally slow in comparison but deep and relaxed, not like she had been breathing during that one night long time ago. He walked over to her and finished the beer while looking at her. She had such a thick, rich hair, slightly curly in a rugged sort of a manner. He sat down on the bed. The weight of his bulk caused the mattress to give moving her as it adjusted to the new pressure. A lock of her hair fell over her face and he reached to pull it back. Her cheek felt warm. He lifted her cut palm to see the wound. It was still unclosed but healing: he could see newly formed ligaments and flesh at the bottom of the cut. Tension in the muscles along his spine relaxed as a relief he had not expected reached them. He put her hand back down, gently.

Logan laid the empty bottle on the chair next to the bed. He got up, unbelted his jeans and took them off. The shirt followed but he made sure he had both garments folded neatly on the back rest. He avoided looking directly at her face as he climbed over her onto the other side of the bed.

_God, I'm tired. I need the sleep._ He kept staring at the ceiling. The scent of cinnamon crept forward from his lost memories making his skin crawl. He turned to his side, towards Grace. He didn't know who the redhead he dreamt about was. She was always enveloped in a mantle of painful wanting, even lust sometimes. He didn't know why, he just wanted her, badly. But when he was not dreaming (or hallucinating) of her, the scent of cinnamon felt threatening like it felt now even when he knew it was just a memory and not a real sensation.

He pulled the duvet from under him and wrapped it around his legs and waist. Some of the soft quilt was stuck under Grace and he left it there using it as an excuse to get closer to her. He liked the way her hair smelled: it kept the scent of cinnamon away.

15


	7. 13: Lines of Sight

13. Lines of Sight

_The door opens and the light burns my eyes like laser beams. I squint, even though it doesn't help much after the aeons of darkness, but I don't want to turn my head away. I don't dare to. I want to see what's coming, and the light is a piddling pain in comparison._

_The doorman thrusts the door open all the way and it bangs against the wall. He apparently looks at me but I can't be sure, I only see a distorted, black figure against the burningly bright light that eats away all contours. I assume he does since he doesn't move for awhile before stepping back to make way for someone else behind the wall._

_'Okay, all yours,' he says to whoever it is beyond what the doorway reveals; I would want to brush the hair away from my face but I can't be bothered to. A familiar figure shades the light filling up the doorway with his broad frame. I welcome the shade, it lessens the pain in my eyes even if or precisely because I know it's the only good thing that he will grant me._

_I don't get up, don't even sit up. There's no point in doing so. He steps in bowing slightly as he passes under the lintel. He stops in front of me and his boots fill my field of vision. Someone hangs a trouble light on the hook by the door. The door closes and the soft, artificial glow of the bulb is balm to my eyes. I look up and he looks down on me. We both know how this goes._

_He pushes me over to my stomach with his boot, not kicking, just moves me around like I was a stone on a path or a log to sit on. I appreciate that; it's the little things that count here. Just like the shade. And the trouble light. You need to count your blessings and know when to quit._

_He kneels down on me, like he always does, one knee on my spine just below the shoulder blades. He's heavy. I adjust my head as his weight hampers my breathing; I know he does it on purpose._

_He holds still, much longer than usually. I count that as a blessing too. Then I feel his fingers in my hair as he pulls the locks away from my face and tucks them behind my ear. Strange. Scary. He never does that. I can't remember him ever touching me unless for pain. I can't keep my muscles from tensing up under him and I know he will notice. I hold my breath._

_He keeps on stroking my hair, lets my matted shag of hair slip through his fingers. He doesn't pull on the knots but lets them pass. I'm confused. He never does that. Never, not once. I'm scared for the first time in a long while. Had forgot how it feels._

_He pulls away and I could swear I hear him sigh. He makes me wait again. I hear him unbuckle his belt._

_'Let's get this over with.'_

_Wait! Did he speak? He has never spoken before. Did he really say something? Wait! Wait! What did you say, I want to say but I can't. I can't remember how long it's been since I last spoke. I try to push my shoulders off the floor so that I could see him, but he grabs my hair on the back of my head and pins my forehead down against the stone._

_'Don't,' he says into my ear and this time I'm sure I hear him speak. It sounds like a growl, a warning, and I take the hint. I feel his breath in my ear. I give up. 'Good girl,' he says softly. I feel him move away. He lifts his knee off my back and puts it between my thighs. I count my blessings and give up. I feel his hands on my pelvis._

* * *

The touch of a heavy hand on my loin burned like branding iron and I woke up. The hand didn't disappear. It was a real, solid touch weighing down on me. I smelled him. I heard his breath, calm, calculating, impersonal. The touch of his hand held me still, his thumb just above my hipbone, his fingers spread on my back; the palm in contact, warm, affirming the state of affairs. I would have known that touch from anything. It was him.

He sat down on the bed next to me. The mattress yielded under him causing my body to lean against his hip; I was lying on my left side. He moved his hand over to the small of my back, then upwards with a movement akin to a caress. I would have shivered but I had learned my lesson and I stay still, absolutely still under him. It was easier that way. Less pain. Over sooner. More merciful. I kept my eyes closed. I was in a bed and it was all I wanted to know: the softness of the mattress, the blanket across my legs. His hand moved upwards towards my neck and he stroked my hair, my shoulder, the side of my neck with the fingers touching gently on my throat and the artery leading up to my brain. I tried not to but I begun to shiver. He would not like that, I knew. I tried so hard not to but I failed. I heard how my breath spluttered in my throat.

He pushed me over to my back, gently but irresistibly, and I felt my body obey. I begun to shake. It was a new thing, to be turned over to my back, he had always had me lying on my belly. He shifted his body coming up closer to my face; he had left his hand on my shoulder. He stroked my cheek with his free hand, gently, almost as if trying to be reassuring. His smell. I had though it was over, but there he was.

'Grace?'

It was the voice that set me off, the deepness of it, the dark rumble. The pent-up energy of fear burned through and I went after him with all I had. I grabbed his hair, yanked his head back and managed to sink my knee into his side just under his armpit. With any other man it would have been enough to bust some of the rib bones and to drive the pieces into the lung but not with him. All I managed was to get tangled up in the blanket as I fought. He had so much more muscle and sheer weight on him. He pinned me down, swearing as he grabbed my hands. I tried to pry myself free, to throw him off, to unroot him. His hands came down on my shoulders and I countered with another kick at him, tried to get my legs between us. I got one hand free and threw a wide punch but it got blocked and my wrist was closed within his fist. He growled a warning that made me give up the fighting. A scream burned in my chest as I got pinned down on the bed but I had learned my lesson and I let the sound die. He sat down on my hips, captured my wrists in one hand pressing them against my belly and pushed with the other one against my sternum. I opened my eyes. I wanted to see what was coming, seeing was the only thing left to my will.

'Hey, whoa.'

I tried to focus my vision. I trembled uncontrollably under the weight on my hips.

'Hey, come on, slow down. You're only gonna hurt yourself.'

He sounded so nice, so deceiving. Like when he had talked to me in that cell, kindly, that one time, long ago. So long ago. He had sounded regretful but he had returned a few days later and nothing had changed. I begun to cry. He would cash that in later on.

'Hey, hey. Come on. Look at me.'

I looked up, and it was him, and the scream that I had tried to deny escaped.

'Sh, don't –.' That sent me into another hopeless struggle to free myself. He put a bit more pressure on my chest but relieved it the instant I stopped fighting him. 'There you go. Is alright. Look at me.'

I kept on quivering but eventually looked at him again. He had brown eyes, deep auburn ones. I wanted to look away but I couldn't anymore. He lifted his hand off my chest and begun to stroke my hair again. I couldn't fathom why. Why would he touch me so gently only to do what he was about to do? My shaking changed into a frozen tension. I kept on looking into his eyes. I wanted to see what was coming. I wanted him to keep on doing what he was doing. As long as his hands were grabbing my wrists and stroking my hair they could not move down onto his belt.

'See, it's alright.' I saw him smile at me and it chilled my spine. He pulled his hand way from my hair.

'I'm gonna let go and stand up now, okay?' I kept on looking at him. What was this? 'Do you hear me? I'm gonna let go and stand up. You just stay there. Right there, alright?' I took a look around. 'Are we clear on this?' he demanded. I nodded.

He opened, slowly, his fingers around my wrists and backed away with slow, relaxed movements. I escaped the other way, up against the headboard as soon as he was off of me. He put his hands out, palms towards me reassuringly as he withdrew on his knees towards the feet of the bed.

'Whoa, it's alright. Nothin's gonna happen here.'

I caught my breath and the world begun to clear up. Something was not right. I had my clothes on, my own clothes. I looked up, confused, at the man. 'Logan?' He didn't say anything, just got off the bed. I looked down. It really was a bed I was on, not a stone floor. Around me was a small one room apartment. Daylight crept in through the half closed blinds. I had my trousers on. And my jacket. I let myself breathe again.

'Grace, you okay there?'

I smiled weakly, but only glanced at him. I was so afraid, of him, and I lied to the best I could hoping that the smell of fear would cover the dishonesty. 'It's okay. I'm slowly gathering my wits here.'

'You had a nightmare. Bad one.'

I let out a nervous chuckle: 'Aye. A bad one.' I took another look around the room making sure I really was where I was. The door was too far away.

'What was is about?'

I shuddered. 'It's nothing. A weird dream. Something that happened a long, long time ago.'

Logan grunted as if agreeing and smiled crookedly. 'In a galaxy far, far away. Got those too. I'm gonna sit down on that chair again, if it's okay with you.'

I nodded and tried not to pull away from him when he got closer to me.

'Just gonna sit here.' He turned the chair so that he wouldn't face me directly but in a slight angle. I watched him sit down; his proximity still made me nervous. He put his legs out, crossed his ankles and folded his arms across his chest.

'Was it me in your dream?'

I couldn't keep from adjusting my seat timidly. 'What makes you think that?'

'The look on you face when you saw it was me sitting on you.' Blunt and honest as ever. 'You got more scared when you saw it was me.'

I was scared of him.

Had it really been him? Not just in the dream but in real life? He had the build and the appearance in general. 'I'm not sure,' I admitted, 'I think it was you in the dream.' I looked away, ready to bolt. Couldn't help it. I wanted somebody to hug the fear away from me.

'And in the real memory?' He sounded casual though I knew he was anything but.

'I don't know.'

'You don't know or you're not sure?' Somehow he didn't think that I might not want to tell him. Or more likely he just didn't care.

Had it been him? Who had it been – for those six months? I had almost forgot about those months, hadn't thought about them in a long while. Could it have been him? 'I'm not sure,' I confessed, 'There is a resemblance.' An uncomfortable silence followed.

'Right,' was all he said. He avoided my eyes and got up. I twitched. 'Relax, darlin'. I'm gettin' us some coffee.' He sounded unconcerned. 'No tea in this house.'

I pulled myself a bit more together while he busied himself with the coffee maker. I untangled my feet from the bed spread and sat on the edge of the bed. I closed my eyes. Nothing in the past can hurt us anymore unless we let it. It was ancient history, what had happened to me. I had survived. They had found me and got me out.

I hoped it had not been him. But I wasn't sure. Memory is a funny thing. You think you would remember such a man. There was something like him in Logan and something like Logan in him. I hoped it was the memory playing tricks on me.

'With milk, right?'

I surprised myself by not shying away. 'Aye, thanks.' The hot mug felt good in my hands. Logan sat down on the chair and took a sip from his mug. I would have preferred black tea, but coffee was better than nothing and it helped to ease the tension. The power of social rituals.

'So, what was it about?' He took a sip and looked up at me from behind the mug's rim. Not the one to beat around the bush.

And no point in hiding in one: I knew he could smell much of the story on me. 'I was captured once. Years ago. By – opposing forces.' The coffee felt so good. I felt how the warm liquid flowed down my throat and along the walls of my stomach. Its heat helped to dissolve the memory of the cell.

'Where?'

'In –,' I wasn't sure if I should tell him but, what the hell, he would have known whether I lied or not, and besides, it had been a long time ago. 'In Afghanistan. Late seventies. Just before the Islamic revolution in Iran.'

'Then it probably wasn't me.' There was a hint of relief in the change of his posture.

'I wasn't held there, only captured. They transported me rather soon after they had caught me. Everyone, at least those I saw there, spoke English.'

'And that was in –?' He lifted his eyebrow for emphasis.

'Can't tell you. It's classified.'

To my relief he shrugged his shoulders indifferently. 'Fine. What they wanted for you?'

I frowned. 'What do you mean?'

'You were a hostage, right? What did they demand in exchange?'

I snorted dismissively. 'I wasn't a hostage. I was a captive or just held in captivity at least.' The ordinary words used to describe a person locked up in some forsaken dungeon did not quite catch how I would describe the experience. They would have treated me better if I had been a hostage. 'I wasn't officially there.'

He nodded. I reckon he had a pretty good idea of what I was talking about. 'How long?'

'About six months.' No reply on that.

* * *

_I wonder how long I was held._ Captivity was not the word he would have used to describe his ordeal. Nor imprisonment. Words just did not do justice to his experiences. Did a lab rat qualify as a prisoner in any meaning of the word?

He studied Grace as she sipped the coffee. Six months was a long time and not a pleasant period by the look of her. The smell of fear hovered about her like cloud of mustard gas and he wondered if she was aware that her hands still shook. She avoided looking directly at him but she clearly kept a keen eye on him.

_What the hell did happen to her there?_ He was able smell some of it on her.

Not quite the wake-up he had had in mind. She had been so peaceful throughout the night – especially in comparison to the previous occasion – and when her healing sleep changed into ordinary one some two hours ago, he hadn't thought much of it. He had already been up when the nightmare had begun, but he had not thought to wake her up before it had got so intense all of a sudden. And when he had put his hand on her hip to shook her awake, then had tried to sooth the terror away from her with gentleness that had surprised him, all hell had broken loose. What the fuck had she been dreaming about?

_Like you don't already know._

'What was the dream about?'

_Can't you guess, dumb-ass? Don't you fucking smell it?_

She looked so small there, sitting on the bed's edge and hugging her hot mug with both of her hands as if its warmth could safe her life. But he wanted to know, especially if it was about him.

She put the empty mug down on the floor. 'Something that happened while I was there.'

'And what was that?' _Unfair. Life's a bitch._ Logan knew he had the right to know if he indeed had been there, part of her personal history. Grace looked as if she was about to bolt again; he almost reached for her hand. He made a small concession: 'What did they wanted from you?'

'I can't remember. First they asked questions, some at least, but that lasted only for a month if even that.' She shuddered. 'I don't know why they kept me after that.'

_Alive you mean. Unusual anyhow._ He let her settle down a bit while he finished his mugful. 'So they didn't leave you alone after the – questioning?' _Unfair._

'No.' She lifted her feet on the bed and hugged her knees. Logan remembered how she had looked that night, after the poolside drinking, crying to get into his bed. _No hidden agendas there, bub_, he reminded himself, _she got your DNA that way._ He had figured that out during the night. He waited for an answer but she didn't seem willing to go there. Logan decided to adjust his approach.

'How do I fit in there? If it was me.' He more or less doubted he had been there. _Why would have I met her? Why would they have let two captives meet?_ It seemed a bit presumptive to assume that they would have happened to be in the same place.

She said something in a language he did not recognise and begun to rock herself gently. She sighed after awhile and glanced at him. 'They kept me in this lightless small room with stone walls and stone floor. A bit like a cellar but it was warm. And always pitch black when I was alone and I was alone a lot. Except when I was fed and when he – paid a visit.'

Logan tried to remain as seemingly neutral as possible.

'He came by every three, four days. I don't know, it's real hard to keep track of time there.' She rubbed her brow. 'It was real hard. Was.'

He waited.

'He always came in alone. Others mostly didn't come in at all, if you don't count the times I was taken out for a medical. Otherwise it was always him alone.' She drew in a long breath and closed her eyes. Concentration and determination furrowed her brow. 'He always came in alone, turned me onto my stomach and –'

'I get the picture,' Logan interrupted. He didn't want to hear it from her lips, he knew already. _Raped._ Every third day. For six months. _And she remembers it, every detail. I have only hazy dreams and nightmares._ He was jealous of her ability to remember.

_Oh, Jesus Christ, what if it was me?_ He looked at her directly, trying to remember, but all that made into his mind were the days after she had found him. She had brought those papers back with her, papers where they said he was wanted for a rape. _Maybe it was me?_ He remembered sitting on her on the floor of her cabin and slicing through her shirts in rage, ready to molest her. _I thought she smelled familiar then. Is this why?_

Her voice cut the silence. 'Could I have another cup of coffee?'

Logan looked at her in surprise. Grace returned his gaze with resolve; some decision had been made without him being aware of it and it rattled his gage to be left out of the loop. He clenched his jaw but scooped up the her mug where it lay on the floor next to her feet. His forearm brushed roughly against her leg accidentally – he really had not meant to – causing her to flinch. It stung him. _I thought to make her fear me._

_Mission accomplished._

He went over to the kitchenette and slammed the mug down on the counter. He reached for the coffeepot but changed his mind and opened the cupboard above it instead. He took out a glass, pulled out a bottle from underneath the countertop and returned to the chair. She took the glass he offered and let him pour a hefty measure of whiskey for her. She sniffed in the fumes.

'You want water in it? It's cask strength, ' he asked.

She smiled shyly. 'It's fine. I'll survive it.' He wondered if it was the booze she meant. He watched her to take first a sip then a steep gulp from the glass. She swallowed and drew air in through her teeth. 'Islay,' she offered with slight surprise.

'Ardbeg,' Logan verified and presented the label on the bottle as a guarantee. 'I like the peat,' he elaborated. Another weak smile flashed on her face and she raised the glass in salute. Logan seconded with the bottle and drank a mouthful with her. It was a strong tasting liquor, even overpowering with its intense flavours of peat and smoke and even a hint of salt somewhere in the background. He let the fumes from within his mouth reach his nose. The exhausts of the cask strength whiskey almost forced tears from his eyes as the tastes and the odours and the burning of alcohol overrun his olfactory array suffocating momentarily all other sensations. _Water of life_, he thought and almost bared his teeth as the fumes seared his nose and throat. He might not be able to get drunk but the sensory overload from strong and complex liquor was a high on its own right, a small rapture relieving him, if only for a second, of the mundane. A song started to play in his mind, emerging from some forgotten crevice of his mind, and he begun to hum the tune aloud, softly, without meaning to do so.

'Water of love,' said Grace silencing him, 'You have a nicer voice than Knopfler.'

Logan took one more swing from the bottle and patted the cork down without offering her a refill. 'Is that what it is?' He took the bottle back to the cupboard. The wordless tune kept on playing in his ears. He picked up an apple and tossed it to Grace as he went to sit in the armchair. Grace caught the apple and bit into it. The tune persisted and he grunted.

'How did you get out?'

Grace sighed, fell backwards on the bed, and Logan caught a hint of relaxation in her air. 'I was rescued. They took their time but they got me out eventually.' She munched on the apple for awhile. 'I wish they had come –.' She sat up abruptly and buried her teeth into what was remaining of the apple.

_You wish. No-one came for me._ 'Are you done?' he said being suddenly frustrated by her presence. 'You said yesterday that you needed to talk to me. You done yet?' He suddenly wished he had killed her the first night at the cabin. _I should have killed her. Would have saved me so much pain._

_But who would then kill me?_

'No, there's still stuff we need to talk about,' she said. Logan looked up and saw that she had turned towards him. 'The thing is,' she continued and lifted her right leg on the bed so that she sat half cross-legged, 'now that we know what you are we want to find out where you come from, who made you.' She grimaced as he scowled at her words. 'I'm sorry, meant to say that we want to know where you come from.'

'Fuck that. Like you said, I didn't come from somewhere. I was made.'

She remained calm as if she had felt the burning in his blood. 'We have to find out who made you,' she repeated, 'and we have to find out if there's more – people like you out there.'

A chill run up his spine. 'More?'

'Aye, more. It's really complicated to produce something like you, and since they succeeded, they probably didn't stop there. The chances are,' she said staring at him steadily, 'there are others.'

Now he really felt the cold. 'Weapons like me?'

'Soldiers like you. Maybe others with different skill sets. That's something else we need to find out.'

He remembered the dream he had had about the jungle and his hand inside a man's chest. There had been others in the bush with him, and he was sure it had not been an ordinary, regular, everybody-has-them -kind of a dream; He didn't have ordinary dreams, not the ones that he remembered. If it was true and there were others like him, with his talents and desires, even he could see how that would not do. _They won't have us runnin' amok. They'll be comin' after us._ He stood up. Grace followed his lead.

'I ain't comin' with you, darlin', he said hunching his shoulders in rising anger with his legs apart and his weight on the balls of his feet. 'I ain't goin' to be used by you.' He took a step closer and matched his shoulders and chest against hers; she was almost as tall as him. He looked down into her eyes, but he kept his hands at his side, in readiness. '_Someone_ might have manufactured me but I ain't _yours_.' The last word came out as a growl. 'And if you, darlin',' he whispered as he took a step pressing her back, 'if you get into my way –.' He took another step and lifted his finger on the soft spot between her collarbones where he had clear access to the arteries supplying her brain. He snarled and finished the sentence: '– then I get to lick your blood off my hands, like I promised.'

She looked down at his finger and hand on her. 'This is getting ridiculous,' she said reeking exasperation. She lifted her hand under his on her chest and twisted his hand away in one smooth movement of her wrist and arm. 'I thought you wanted to find out how you were and are – Wolverine. Feel free to figure it out all by yourself.'

'Never asked your help in that, did I,' he answered scathingly and put his finger back where it had been. He waited for a retaliation and felt a bite of disappointment when she didn't. _Her eyes are brown_, he realised when she didn't avert her eyes as he tried to stare her down. She tilted her head back a little and she squinted her eyes in a pensive gesture.

Grace sighed admitting her defeat as her shoulders loosened up. 'Aye, you never did.' She turned away from him and picked up her boots from the floor before sitting down on the bed. She put the boots on and begun to lace them up. Logan stared at her in surprise. Was this it? Her whole demeanour had changed and he felt how she withdrew from him. The strange closeness he had had with her was shrivelling up in front of his eyes.

'I will keep what I promised,' she said when she had the first boot done. She sat up before continuing to the second and looked at him with a tinge of sadness in her eyes. 'I will be there when you need me.' She took a pen and the black notebook from her pocket and scribbled something on one page which she then tore off and handed to him. 'Call me on this number or you can just drop in at my place. You remember where the cabin is, don't you?' Logan took the paper and nodded. He read the number knowing that he would remember it and stuffed the paper into the pocket of his jeans. She was smiling softly, but with a hint of regrets he thought, when he looked back at her. 'If I'm not at home,' she said as she bent down to lace up her other boot, 'get the key from Lou. I'll tell him to expect you.' She stood up. 'The White River Trading Company, the only store in town, remember?' she explained when she saw him frown.

Logan swallowed. 'I remember him.'

'Feel free to wait for me there. Even if its days or weeks. I'll come up with some story for Lou to explain you staying there.' She cocked her head slightly to one side as she looked at him. 'I will keep my promise. No strings attached.' She fell silent and Logan smelled deeper sadness than what he would have expected. It seemed as if she was about to say something more but she settled for a smile and a simple 'See you then, mo caraid.'

Logan' eyes followed her as she passed him on her way to the door. Her scent flooded his nose. 'Hold on,' he barked as she was about to move beyond his reach. He tried to catch her by the shoulder but his hand landed more on her neck; her hair felt silky under his hingers. To his dismay Grace fell onto her knees like a rag under his touch. Her arms flew up to shield her head and the reek of fright blasted at him like the heat from exploding ordnance. Logan stood dumbstruck by her reaction. The smell of her fear licked his skin and he for a moment all he could do was to watch her cower at his feet. She didn't emit a single sound, just held herself recoiled on her knees in a partial sitting position, arms around her head, elbows bent forward shielding her face. Her body quivered.

_She's waitin' for me to beat her_, he realised to his astonishment, _Where the hell did that come from?_

Logan circled around her and kneeled down. He touched, cautiously, her shoulder. She flinched under his touch and her breathing came in shallow pants.

_Not this shit again._

He pulled back a little and waited. He watched her wait a little while longer for the blow that would not come, then her arms relaxed and she exhaled before slowly lowering her guard. The readiness, though, never left her.

'What the fuck was that about?' He was fed up with shit like this but he stayed on his haunches.

'It was you.'

'What?' he asked tiredly and stood up. She didn't. The smell of fear lingered still like the smell of ozone after rain.

Grace backed away from him before slowly raising up. 'It was you, there. Your hand –,' she looked at the hand with which he had tried to grab her shoulder. A shudder run through her. 'It was you. Your hand on my neck. You used to hold me down with your hand on my neck.'

Then he remembered it. How he had held her by her hair. How he had her pinned down under his knee on her back. He remembered the smell of the cell, the smell of her and her scent, and the smell of himself and how he had felt. He took a stumbling step backwards but then steadied himself.

'You're sure?' It didn't come out as defiantly and self-assuredly as he had intended.

_Well, what do you think? You know it was you. You know what you are. Call the fuckin' spade a spade and quit foolin' yourself._

_Like you didn't know already._

_This is who you are. This is what you do. You maim and rape and it's all in your nature._

She didn't reply in words but he saw the repulsion on her face and the readiness to fight or flight in her posture. The mixed odours of fear, confusion, anger and disappointment crept up on him. It hurt him deep under, somewhere.

'I already told you what I am, right from the get-go,' he spat out looking for a defence, for anything to put between them. Rancour, the only reaction he felt available to him, crawled up his arms and he advanced towards her. She retreated before him. 'You should've taken my word for it, darlin',' he said, sneering, feeling threatened. It was her own fault. She hadn't believed him. She circled around the arm chair and he followed. The rage in him pushed his claws out, slowly; he watched her brace herself for the impact. Seeing her raise her hand to ward him off with an open palm as if that would have been a match for him even without the claws, amused him. He sneered first at her, then at the hand, thinking about what he would do next when he realised what it was he was looking at.

_Her hand._

_She cut her hand on my claw._

He halted in mid-step.

_There's no scar._

He looked at his own hands. He opened his fists; the claws were twice as long as his fingers.

_What the fuck are you doin'? You told her she could trust you._ His knees wobbled. _What the fuck did I_ do _to her?_ He had never felt so close to crying before.

'Grace,' he said out loud. She had a guarded, doubtful expression on her face but she didn't back away from him, and the scents of fear and anger had been subdued by curiosity. There was an openness to her pose and Logan clung onto it. He held his hands out trying to reassure her with his open palms; the claws were still fully extended, protruding from his knuckles.

_What the hell have I done to her?_

'Grace.' He despaired when he notice she begun to move her weight back. 'No, wait.' He took a step towards her as he spoke and she didn't move way. He wanted to say that he had not meant to do what he had done, explain that he had been a meagre pawn in some sick, twisted, perverted game mastered by others but not him. That someone had forced him on her. _That ain't true._ There hadn't been someone pulling the strings without or even with him knowing it. He had done what he had done willingly. Free will. A choice. Somebody had asked and he had obliged with pleasure of his own. _You did it 'cause you loved it,_ he told himself; he still remembered the feeling, the pure heat and lust for blood. He felt sick. 'Love, godallmighty, what I did to –.'

The door of the flat swung open behind his back and he smelled musk - the real thing, not the synthetic substitute. Grace was the first to react before he had even really figured out what was taking place behind him. He saw her look beyond his shoulder, how astonishment took over her expression, her saying 'Sattar? and by then it was too late. An unfamiliar pair of hands gripped his neck and shoulder, and exquisite pain and following numbness flooded him as he fell to his knees gasping for air. Pain seared his nerves every time he even attempted to move. A man came into his field of vision, dark haired, tanned skin, clad in linen-coloured suit and the fragrance of musk. The man read Logan's features, concern furrowing his brow. Logan stared back, tried to glare at the man but the man turned away towards Grace. Pain clamped Logan's teeth together when tried to speak. The spasm split a molar in his lower jaw (His teeth didn't heal. Broken ones fell out in a day or two when a new one pushed them out.), but he did manage to get a word out. 'Grace?' came out more like a pathetic whimper than anything else.

'What the hell are you doing here?' Logan heard Grace say. He tried to look up again but the pain the movement caused felt like molten steel and he was forced into staring at the floor. He tasted copper.

'You missed your check-in call,' said the man holding Logan in his grip. 'Sattar called me after he couldn't reach you. Are you okay?'

'I'm fine,' Logan heard her answer but smelled the lie.

'You're lying, even I can tell,' the man replied. 'What did he do to you?' Logan could tell by the direction of the voice that the man was looking down at him. Logan tried to yank himself free but only managed to summon up more pain strong enough to make him vomit, most of which landed on his chest and lap.

Grace didn't answer right away. The two men waited patiently in silence, one maintaining his grip on Logan who heard the other man take a step in Grace's direction. The silence held on making Logan understand that despite of her answer the men would know he had done something. He spat out the remains of the puke. The paranoia in him flared.

_It's a set-up._

_She cut her hand to keep me here until these two fuckers could get here._

He let the rage rush through him bathing in its intoxicating refuge. He had the claws out already. All he had to do was to use them, but when he made an attempt at the man holding him he was met with pain reminiscent of the adamantium-bonding in his nightmares. He couldn't growl, breathing became optional. His heart rate and blood pressure surged as his body tried to cope with the stress. Then a murmur appeared into his heart beat and he saw stars and smelled sulphur in his nose. His body went limp and the panic died away as he begun to drift.

_Maybe I'll die here._

He heard a woman's voice near him: 'What he did or did not do is between me and him, Nick. Let him go.'

'He has his claws out. I can take care of him right here. He's not worth the risks, Grace.' Logan smelled the bottled up anger, concern, and underlying jealousy as he stared at the man's shoes. Then the world turned dark but he could still hear Grace and the man, Nick, argue over him.

'He's mine, Nick,' Grace's voice said warning the man.

_No I ain't._

'You're not bound by the Code to him anymore, Grace. If he caused harm to you, you're not bound to him.'

_What the hell does that mean?_

'I still claim him, and it's my call anyhow, not yours or anyone else's. And he can't retract the claws when you are holding him down. He can't even breathe. Just look at him.' She sounded very angry.

'Nick,' the musk-scented man said with a low, soft voice, 'she is right. It is her call and he is hers to claim. Especially because of – whatever happened between them two. Let him go.'

'You got to be kidding me, Sattar. Don't encourage her. This idiocy has lasted long enough.'

'No. It is very likely that we will need his help,' the man called Sattar answered. A long silence followed and Logan managed to draw in a whining breath.

'Is that what your talent tells you?' Nick said eventually.

'Yes. The probability is high.' Another silence and another breath. The pain it delivered caused Logan's heart to loose its rhythm.

'He's arrhythmic.' _Grace._ 'Let him go. Now.'

_Grace._

_No._

_I had it commin'._

The pain dissolved and he could breathe properly again. The claws retracted on their own making his overstrained body twitch at the pain. Someone took his hand and familiar warmth radiated into him.

'Grace, this is not a smart move.' That Nick fellow again. Logan realised that he was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall under the window; he felt the cool air leaking in on his neck. It was Grace holding his hand and he felt her consciousness move in him fixing the damage with his ability to heal. It occurred to him that if he really was a weapon, a manufactured tool, then there probably was a name for his ability to heal himself absurdly quickly. _A production code. Or a feature. It gotta have a name in a list._ Grace pulled out and he felt colder, but his heart had got its beat back.

'Logan, can you hear me?'

He nodded. 'Yeah, loud and clear. Seein' still a mess.' He could barely see enough to catch her smile. She smelled relieved. _Why?_ He wanted to touch her face. He lifted his right hand but a heavy boot came down on it before it got off the floor.

'You keep your hands to yourself.' Logan felt dizzy as he lifted his chin to see the speaker. The tall, burly man gazed calmly down at him. Logan recognised the leather jacket and remembered seeing the man outside the cafe with Grace. Logan answered with polite 'fuck you' and a growl. 'Watch it,' the man he knew to be Nick warned.

Grace's hand came down on Logan shoulder and he turned his head, still groggy, to her. His sight was clearing up. Grace had a concerned look in her eyes and he touched her neck below her ear with his left hand; some of her hair got entangled with his fingers. Then it wasn't her sitting in front of him but him sitting almost on top of her, with his hand in her hair and the other one loosening up his belt. She didn't have much on, just some disgustingly filthy rags for clothes, and her thighs and hips were in full view and covered in bruises. He knew it had been him who had put them there. He felt his hand unbutton the fly of his camouflaged fatigues and reminded himself to take care with his hold on her as intense arousal sometimes caused his claws to extend involuntary. He had been told off for cutting her too badly. They wanted her intact, reasonably intact, at least. She needed to stay fit enough. _For what?_

He heard her say something he didn't quite catch. He blinked, shook his head and saw the present version of her again. His fingers were clenching her neck with his thump buried painfully under her jaw. She was holding his wrist trying to gently but firmly make him let go. He unclenched his grip and she let him go.

_You knew what I am._

Logan yanked his right hand free making Nick stumble and leaving some torn-off skin under the sole of the man's boot. Logan stood up, swayed, shook his head again and found his senses. He turned his back deliberately to the two men trying to signal his contempt and dominance through the indifference of the gesture. He kept his eyes on Grace but could not make himself to look into her eyes directly. There was a curl of hair falling down across her temple and he nailed his eyes on that.

'You ain't bound to me in any way.' He wanted to add some term of affection to the sentence but failed to come up with any. He almost glanced at the men over his shoulder but managed to stifle the movement into a mere twitch. He forced himself to meet her eyes. 'You owe me nothin'. He –,' now Logan shoot a look over his shoulder at the man in leather behind him, 'Let him kill me, I've had it comin' for a long while,' Logan continued as he looked back at Grace, 'but I think it ought to be you.' He looked away into the distance through her. The presence of the two men behind him felt like weight on his back. _This is it. No further. It ends here._ He felt a surge of relief rise through his legs followed by an unprecedented calmness, a state of surrender. 'I think it ought to be you,' he repeated quietly with relief (it was between them two and them two alone). 'But you can have him do me in. If he can.'

Grace remained silent with her eyes looking at his but not seeing. Logan waited for a while for her judgement but when there seemed to be no reply, he turned around to face the two men. He bit his teeth together and faced Nick. 'You want me dead, right?' The man nodded. 'And you can do it too, right now?' Another nod. Logan didn't dare to turn towards Grace, not anymore, though he felt her standing close to him and it felt strangely reassuring, safe. 'Alright,' he said looking straight at Nick as he knelt down: it would be easier for them if he was lower down already. 'Do it now. She deserves to see it.' He saw a shadow of a smile flash across Nick's face.

'Get out, you two.' It was Grace from behind him. Her voice was calm and quiet but without room for argument. The men held their ground a moment longer, then Sattar nudged Nick by the arm and the man relented. Logan remained on his knees as the men walked out. He heard the door close.

'Get up,' she commanded and he followed.

'It's good that it's you,' he said when she came to stand in front of her. 'Can you do it without the sword? I might fight back if you try to do it by –,' he searched for the term, 'delvin' in me. I wouldn't mean to, but still might.'

'I don't want you dead.'

It was a slap in his face and it showed. 'Why the fuck not?' _Who wouldn't?_

Something rippled in her, he could sense it. 'You want me to kill you just because it would be an easy way out for you.' She bit her tongue and sighed. 'But your death is your own, like I said.'

'And I give it to you,' _love_ he added but didn't say it out loud. 'You know what I am. And I did what I did to you. Willingly,' he added though without wanting to, 'I raped you over and over again 'cause I wanted to. Somebody asked me to and I was happy to comply.' There was no escaping that anymore, he knew it. _At least I can own to it, if nothin' else._

'It wasn't you.'

He laughed with scorn towards himself. 'Oh, it was me, darlin', believe me.' Images of the memory flooded his eyes. 'It was me, have no doubt. I remember what I did.'

'I know it was you.' A shiver run through her and she turned slightly away from him for a moment. 'Sattar is right, you know, the two of us are in this together. And I don't want you dead, not for me.'

He laughed again. 'And why not?'

'You're not that man anymore.'

Logan snorted. 'Right.'

'You have changed.'

'And you would know.'

Grace laid a gentle hand on his forearm. 'I'm really afraid of you now, you know. I said I wouldn't be but I am.' He knew she wasn't lying. The smell of fear had never left her since she woke up and her hand trembled slightly. 'But you're not the same man anymore. There's something profoundly different in you. Something has changed.'

'How?' Her touch was a blessing he dared not to receive.

She looked up at him and smiled. 'It's the amnesia, I think. The process of applying adamantium is such a shock that it's usual for the subjects to suffer extensive mental side effects. Without the genetic material that was used to – make you, you wouldn't have even survived. Even if your body could've taken it. No-one comes out as the same person that went in. One changes. Often for the worse.'

'And I'm supposedly better of. Why?'

'Damage to the brain can cause a dramatic change in personality as brain tissue containing personality traits and key memories gets lost. And you have had some serious damage done during the adamantium bonding. Your healing factor restored most of the lost tissue but some information unavoidably gets lost and in your case, most of it was concerned with your personal memories and psyche.'

_Healing factor. So you do have a name for it._ 'Memories make us into who we are,' he offered.

'That's right, and without them you have a certain freedom.'

_Certain freedom. But not absolute._ 'I did rape you. Who knows what else I've done.' He did have an idea through his dreams. 'I still – like violence.' No point in denying the facts. He loved to cause pain, he loved the power he had over other people. It was a source of security, if nothing else. And he was remarkably good at it. Skilled, even articulated in his own way. And it came out instinctually, the skill to fight and maim, without him needing to think ahead and that was a sign of significant competence, of professionalism, a proof of his mastery.

'Do you regret it?' she asked tentatively.

He didn't hesitate. 'Yes,' but it was a mixed feeling. He was truly sorry it had been her, and yet it felt at odds with the pride he took in his might and skill. _I just wish it hadn't been you._ 'Now what?'

Grace looked around thinking. 'I'll go home with the guys. We'll keep an eye on you but only if it's okay with you and from the distance. We really need to find out who's behind this.'

'Fine by me. Do I need to call you or what?' He felt obliged to accept the terms – for her sake but for no-one else.

Grace smiled. 'Not unless you feel the need. Use that number I gave you. You won't see us but we'll be there. We'll let you know it anything pops out of the woodwork.' She begun to button up her jacket, ready to leave. Unthinking Logan squeezed gently her arm by the elbow. She froze and he jerked his hand back.

'Meant nothing by it,' he said being unable to apologise. She rubbed the arm where he had touched him without a reply.

_Shit. She's lost to me._

_Managed to fuck that up too. What ever that was._

'Logan, could you do me a favour?'

'Sure.' He was ready as a boy scout and it annoyed him.

She took a deep breath. 'You really, truly, utterly scare me.' _Ain't that a surprise_, he thought but did not interrupt her. Grace cleared her throat: 'I don't want to fear you. It's – I can't have that.'

'I won't lay a hand on you again.' He honestly meant to keep that promise.

'It's not enough. It takes all my might to stay in the same room with you. It's pure terror to be in your presence. I can't –.' Her voice crumbled and she didn't continue right away. 'When I was there, in that cell, I learned not to fight you. I learned to stay absolutely passive and still.' He knew that. He remembered beating her up, and worse, when she had tensed under his touch at first. 'Now, when you move,' she explained, 'I'm scared to death of you moving.'

'I won't lay a hand on you. You're –,' he paused to swallow, 'safe. You trusted me last night when I said you could.'

'Aye, I did, but it's different now.'

Logan scowled. 'So what the fuck do you want then?'

He saw her shy away from his tone. He almost followed her out of worry.

'I want you to hug me. Put your arms around me and hold me no matter how hard I fight.'

He laughed with a slightly sinister undertone. 'You want me to fuckin' cuddle you? You want to be fucked too as an antidote to me raping you?' He hadn't meant it to come out like that. He hadn't even meant to say it out loud.

'No,' she spat, 'I just need you to hold me tight. This will not work out if I'm goddam petrified every time we're in the same room. I know consciously that you are no threat to me but my subconsciousness is another matter. The quickest way to fix it is to just force it through the experience.'

He did see the point in going cold turkey on it. 'You wanna do it right now? What about those two,' he said nudging with his head towards the door.

'They'll wait.'

Logan though about it. He didn't want for her to be afraid of him, not anymore, not now that he knew. But it was intimidating to let her come so close to him and in such a manner. Not because what it meant for her, but because he didn't completely trust himself to behave accordingly. The memory of her scent under him lingered in his mind, tempting the arousal her presence fed in him. The memories of the cell were still fresh in his mind, too vivid, too infested with emotions and intent.

'Okay,' he said. He took off the vomit-stained t-shirt and cleaned the stains on his jeans with it. He threw the shirt on the floor.

Grace frowned but came to him. She set her arms across her chest, tightly, as a barrier between them. Logan inhaled and put his arms around her trying his best to be reassuring and well-meaning but he held her close. She was stiff as steel, yet passive and malleable to his touch. He kept on holding her like that for a minute or a two, then he lifted his hand to her neck and guided her head to rest against his shoulder. He left his hand there entangled in her hair. It felt strange to hold her like that, with care. He closed his eyes and breathed in her scent.

The image changed. Now they were back in the cell, him grabbing her hair and humping her from behind. He felt her tremble under him.

He came to his sense when he realised he was pulling her by the hair. He relaxed his grip instantly. 'I'm sorry,' he whispered without meaning to. She begun to quiver and it made him stroke her hair. 'Is alright,' he said. 'I ain't gonna do nothin'.' Her legs buckled leaving her weight on his arms. He held on, hoisted her up a bit into a more firm hold. She was shaking now, uncontrollably, sounding as she was about to hyperventilate. Logan considered carrying her onto the bed but abandoned the thought. It would probably be too much for her. Instead he sunk onto he knees. Grace whimpered as they moved down. 'Is alright,' he repeated, 'Nothin's gonna happen.' But she either didn't comprehend it or she took it to mean the opposite.

It felt good to hold her like this, against him, with him embracing her, he realised. It felt good. She begun to cry voicelessly. The smell of tears summoned up a memory in him. He was staring down at her on the stone floor. She had very little on her, some rags and a skimpy thin grey woollen blanket. He saw himself pull it way and how he shoved her over to her stomach with his boot. She was limp, no resistance what so ever left in her, and he knelt down with his knee on her back; he knew it hurt.

He was already aroused when her hair caught his eye. It was matted and dirty but he remember how nice it had been at first when they had opened to door for him for the first time months ago. Logan saw himself reach out and pull the hair away from her face. She was good looking, had been good looking too. All gone now, replaced with blank eyes and cheeks swollen up by his hand.

He had felt sorry for her then, he remembered to his surprise. Genuinely sorry. She hadn't deserved it. They had said she was like him, that she could heal in a similar manner, but it hadn't been as fast as his; he could see the bruises his hands had made on her three days earlier. He touched her cheek gently, trying to be gently, but he saw the shiver his touch caused.

It was all too late by then. He supposed he could have done it differently, if he had wanted to, right from the start. He could have been gentler, caring even, but it was what it was now. And besides, they had let him into believing she could take it. Whoever they were.

He had said something to her then, before moving to fuck her again. He had said something and she had come back alive for a moment. What had it been?

_Let's get this over with._

'One time, back there,' he whispered to her hair as she whimpered in his hold, 'I saw you, I saw what I had done to you.' He knew she had heard him. She was quiet again in his arms but the tense energy was still there as was the reek of terror. 'It could've been done differently but it would've been done anyhow. I took the offer but there would've have been somebody else to take it if I hadn't.' He said it more for his sake than for hers. 'I could have been more – careful.' It was only a matter of skill, he knew it. He could have done it differently if he had been more calculating but he had let himself loose on her.

Logan collected her limbs closer to him. She was still crying but the shaking was gone and she smelled more sad that scared.

'Grace, you want me to let go now?' He feared it was time to let her go and he loosened his grip.

Grace pulled her hands free and wrapped them around his torso. 'Not quite yet.' Logan didn't argue. He drew in her scent trying to drown in it. She was warm now. She had been cold at first, but she was warm now and it helped him to relax. He remembered how she had looked the first time he had seen her with her hands cuffed behind her back. She had been so calm. They had wanted him to beat that calmness out off her.

He realised his hands were stroking her back and he stopped.

'Don't,' she whispered.

'I didn't mean to. I know it's not what you wanted.'

'Don't stop. That's what I meant. It felt good.'

He picked up the motion hesitantly, but when she didn't seem to mind he relaxed into it. It did feel good. Her back under his touch. They way she leaned into him. Her arms around his midsection with her palms open against his bare skin. She sat on his lap with her thigh pressing on his groin. Then she moved to release her arms and begun to pull away in order to stand up.

He kissed her then, on the lips, holding her head between his hands with his fingers in her hair, before she could escape beyond his reach. He realised the inappropriateness of his act when he pulled away but she smiled at him with warmth. She pushed some hair away from his face. The fear of him was not completely gone, not all of it. Some still persisted under her individual scent but he could live with that. Then she kissed him back, lovingly (he recognised the sentiment since is was such a rare thing to have) before she stood up.

'Thank you,' she said. 'Feel free to pop by. Anytime. I'll be there if you need me.' A cloud of sadness moved across her face.'And the sword is there too, if that's what you need. That still holds and I'm still bound to you by that request. Your death is your own, Logan'

Logan stood up. 'I told you there's no bonds between us.' Not in that sense, anyway. 'You may have the right to take my head, but it ain't an obligation just because I asked you to.'

'Do you still want me to kill you?'

'Only because you have the right to take it. Didn't him, that Nick, say that 'cause I have caused harm to you, that Code-thing doesn't apply anymore?'

'Aye.' She seemed to be sorry for that. 'But the sword is there for you, when you want it. Fuck the Code. I can't have your death. It's yours alone.'

Logan gave up. 'Fine.' He walked past her to the door. 'You'd better go. Before they come back up again.' He put his hand on the knob ready to let her go. She followed her and he opened the door. He blocked her way with his arm across the doorway just as she was about to leave.

'You really think I've changed?'

Grace considered the question. 'For sure, no.' That stung. 'But you have the chance. It all depends on the story you keep telling yourself.'

He left his arm where it was, then he simpered at her. 'I'll come by someday. If I feel like it,' he added as to have an escape hatch. She flashed a crooked smile at him and he let the arm drop.

'You know where I keep the bottle. I'll make sure it's Islay,' she said before she left.

* * *

_Caveat Lector: _This chapter has not been betaed. If you find something wrong with the grammar, send me a heads up and I'll fix it. And remember that this story is posted in two parts. Read All Partial Evil – part I first if you're new to this story.


	8. 14: Converging Threads

**14. Converging Threads**

Logan hung up the phone before the line even had a change to connect. He left his hand on the receiver rubbing the black plastic with his thumb as he tried to decide whether or not he in fact should call her. It had become an uncomfortable ritual to pick up a payphone and dial the number Grace had given him only to chicken out when he heard it ring at the other end – often sooner. He was _not_ in the habit of calling her, not often, maybe once in every three months, but it had been going on for years. He let the phone go and turned around to face the babel of drunken voices, chinking glasses and some mediocre rock music that tried its hardest to rise above the racket but which only managed to escalate the cacophony. It was a busy night, and good money to be made on the intoxicated punters.

Logan circled around the worst of the congestion filling up the heart of the large establishment. Some well oiled customers didn't pick up on the exasperation he exuded and he left a string of cursing and threats in his wake. It was a part of the show to gather enough animosity towards his character amongst the crowd before the evening's fights. It upped the bets against him and created some hefty ones for him, though they were usually few and far apart, which meant better returns for him and the ringmaster he was working for. It was a pretty standard prizefighting setup they had going. The ringmaster knew about Logan's mutation and knew how to utilise it without revealing, so far, that ace in their sleeves. He picked up the toughest and the meanest of the willing members of the crowd to fight against Logan thus protecting his other, human fighters from unnecessary risks, and providing the crowds with more brutal and bloodthirsty fights than others in the business could. That was their selling point and it made them good money though it also meant that they had to keep to the less than classy venues of the North American outback. But the money was good. And it was a job with considerable benefits on which the prizefighters capitalised shamelessly.

Logan felt he had found a nice niche for himself to pass the time, but sometimes, and always before a fight, he found himself standing before a payphone, staring at the dial and thinking about Grace. In those moments the roar of what ever dive he was in turned in to a distant rumble as he thought about her cabin. He thought about the mountains and the smell of the snow and pines in the air. And the quiet, the stillness. And the scent of her. And the scent of dried hay. He always, eventually, dialled up the number but when the last number was selected and he leaned against the wall with his hand and shielded the phone and the conversation he was not about to have with his body, he remembered the cell and her in it. He never let the phone ring twice and on the rare occasions when he let it ring once she was never fast enough to pick it up. He didn't know if the number was even legit anymore after such a long time but it was all he had on her. The cabin was absolutely out of bounds for him. He had no business in going there, not after what he had done to her. These days, sometimes, he had dreams about her in that cell and of him there with her. They weren't nightmares while they lasted (he had other dreams for that), often quite the contrary, but he always felt disgusted after he had woken up and wondered why she had not taken his life in the reckoning he deserved. He hated her for that, then, when he lay woken in his bunk with the sheets wet from his sweat. There was no way he could drive up to that cabin just to see her. And to have her scent in his lungs. No way. No question about it.

_It's all gone._

If she ever wanted to find him, she could do it; Logan was sure she had the means to find out where the unanswered calls had come.

Logan kept an eye on the throng he was ploughing through scanning for potential opponents, for big thugs with massive shoulders and an aura of misguided arrogance. He changed his course when he found one, walked right into the sucker's shoulder spilling his pint all over his chest and bounced back the curses with a filthy gesture. One more fucker going to get what he deserves. The coming satisfaction made Logan grin. It burned in his chest and gut, the warm, reassuring knowledge of success; the sense of power, his dominance, and submission he was about to beat out from the fucker in the blue flannel shirt. It made him growl aloud as his claws and hands itched.

Few times over the years he had managed to notice someone keeping an eye on him in the crowd. Always someone he didn't know but who always seemed to know him. They never exchanged words but Logan was sure those times he saw them he was meant to do so, that he was allowed to discover that he was still under surveillance as a bate for the bigger fish. Often it annoyed him, sometimes it felt reassuring; he wasn't as alone as he felt. When he managed to catch one they traded a knowing look and a slight nod recognising that a contact had been made before the tail turned away and disappeared again. Logan never saw the same person twice (and he never saw her).

Logan reached the dark corner he had been heading for and sat down. It was one of their usual dives, remote though well established in certain blood thirsting, boozing and whoring circles under the currents of the society. All kinds of people seemed to crawl into places like these: the ones with money and the ones without (the ones providing most of the entertainment, usually, but not always), lumberjacks and Wall Street white collars off the leash, drifters like him and local residents, old friends and packs of buddies, one night stands with complete strangers you never needed to see again. The real world got checked in upon entering but what one found inside was no paradise or fantasy, just something other than what waited at home or on the road. A drug of a sorts, one that swarmed your dulled senses with intoxication extraordinaire that pulled you under with its promises of ecstasy and it's delivery. People drowned here every night, over again and again. And Logan found his rupture in the intensity of the theirs. He could hunt here though his was forced to let his quarry go.

Logan stared at one of waitresses attending the bar long and hard enough to catch her eye and lifted his forefinger for a beer after he had caught her attention. He, like all the fighters, had a tab that was open within reason. They generated enough business for the patrons to be generous with their beer in return.

The girl that brought to the bottle of beer was dressed in dark jeans and a form-hugging black t-shirt. The bar girls were off limits to the public, untouchable if you wanted to keep having fun in this establishment. Some of the girls did have their share of fun with the fighters after hours but for anyone else they were not available. There had to be some rules, even in a place like this. All anarchy is an illusion.

The girl (Logan hadn't bothered to learn her name yet) put the bottle down in front of him. 'There's someone at the counter asking for you.'

'Yeah?' Logan downed a third of the bottle on one go. 'Who?'

The girl shrugged her shoulders. 'A woman. Dark hair, tall, kinda good looking but not your usual type.' She put her hand on her hip. 'And she ain't alone.'

_Grace?_ He took another swing. 'Not my usual type?' There was a hint of tease in his voice.

The girl laughed. 'Yeah, everyone here knows your type and she ain't it. And like I said, she ain't alone. There's some hulking piece of a man with her.' She glanced over her shoulder. Logan smelled swelling lust. 'Oh well, anyhow, she wanted to know if you were around. We said that we'd let her know if we saw you.'

Logan let the girl wait. Could it be Grace? Usually women came asking for him after the fight but not before it, not unless they were already acquainted with him from an earlier encounter. But apparently this one wasn't his type and Grace had an uncanny talent when it came to finding him.

'What is she wearin'?' he asked.

'What?' Clearly not the question the girl had been expecting from him.

'Her clothes. What are they like'?'

'Ah, right. Jeans and some kind of a parka. Kinda sexy in a way, if you ask me, with that shirt she's wearing.' She smiled coyly. Logan wondered if she was cheering for both teams.

'An air force jacket?'

'I dunno. It ain't blue, if you mean that. It's black.'

_Gotta be Grace, though._ 'Bring me the bottle from the barkeep. And a glass.'

'What about her?'

'I'll let you know when you get back here.'

The girl was about to leave when Logan reached for her elbow. 'How about the man with her?'

The girl thought about it for a moment. 'Big, like I said. Packs a bunch I'd bet. Light haired. Younger than her.'

_Not that Nick then,_ Logan thought. Maybe it wasn't Grace after all. Maybe the guy was just another fighter looking for a team or wanting to set up something against Logan. The girl got a few paces away but then turned around again.

'And I think she's packing.'

Logan nodded and the girl disappeared into the crowd. Logan finished the beer. He rolled the sweating bottle between his hands trying to organise his thoughts.

It probably wasn't Grace but what if it was? Something like this was bound to take place after such a long time. He knew Grace and her kind (what ever they were) were serious about this genetic engineering shit, and the mutants were everywhere these days. You couldn't watch the evening news without at least one of the stories dealing with mutants. It made his fighting life more difficult. One day – and that day was bound to be soon – one day real soon someone in the ring or in the audience would figure out why he always won without a scratch to show and that'll be it. No more Wolverine, the king of the gage. As soon as the word would spread, no-one would be willing to fight him. Not in the ring that is, but he knew he would get more than his fair share in dark alleys behind the bars. And if Grace and company were right, the ever rising numbers of mutants got something to do with him being engineered.

Logan yawned and stretched his arms. This mystery woman thing was easily solved. He saw the girl was returning with his personal bottle of whisky and he tried to peer through the mass of people between him and the counter hoping to catch a glance of this woman of mystery but the crowd was too thick and constantly shifting.

The girl put the bottle and the glass down. Logan began to pull the cork off the bottle.

'Should I tell her where to find you?'

Logan filled the glass to the brim. 'Yeah, why not but not now. Tell her to wait at the bar. I'll look her up between the fights.' The girl said that she would and left. Logan followed her back with his eyes and downed the whisky on one go. The girl disappeared behind the line of customers at the end of the bar. Logan poured a refill and let his gaze wonder about. _I'll find out who she is whichever way. _The ringmaster and two roadies he had were preparing the ring for the night's fights. Logan followed how the older roadie checked that all the chain-link panels were secured to the larger frame. A loose corner or a protruding wire could cause serious damage during a fight. Not that it would matter in his case but you couldn't have punters puncturing their eyes or ripping open their arteries. Not in these fights anyway. There where other venues for that kind of tourneys. He couldn't take part in those: it was impossible to hide his mutation when you were meant to twist bones and remove earlobes.

The first rounds of fighting went by without an incident. The human fighters, four of them, won their matches though one perhaps too easily and one with only luck. Logan's opponent had been what he usually got: a bully with some shoulders and a very much larger-than-life self-image who thought himself to be invincible. Logan had proved the bastard wrong with a dislocated shoulder and a possibly broken jaw. He had took his time, played his part feeding the bastard's confidence and self-flattery before taking him down in a prolonged row of calculated punched that ended with an elegant welt on the chin. It had been a satisfaction. Logan liked that, being an instrument of some kind of justice (he didn't know nor much care what kind). It was a way of making someone deserving take on some of his pain. And he had plenty to pass around. He had more suckers to beat at the end of the second half. This one had been only the first course, an appetiser to entice the rage of the crowds. The was more to come. More fun to follow.

He rubbed the sweat off but didn't shower even if it was two hours before the second round. He run his fingers through his hair a couple of times and headed for the bar. He wanted to find out how the mystery bird would react to his smell. And if he would like hers. The thought made him pause on the dressing room's door as he realised that he did have a type but not of the kind the others thought him to have. It wasn't based primarily on the looks; it was a scent. He picked up girls whose scent he liked, the looks where – even to his own surprise – not that important. Good looks just compensated for a lacking scent. He snorted at himself as he stepped out.

The bartender pointed towards the far end of the bar with his forefinger when he saw Logan emerge from door leading to the backstage. Logan nodded and lifted up two fingers before pointing at the direction the barkeep had indicated. The sturdy, middle-aged man nodded in return and Logan headed for the end of the long bar. The barkeep caught up with Logan with two glasses of whiskey in his hand and Logan trusted the man's intent to guide him to the woman. The whiskey made Logan hesitate for a moment, though: the women that wanted to see him usually tended to prefer some kind of a mixed drink or a straight vodka. Logan sniffed the air hoping to catch a whiff of the woman beforehand but the background stench of the partying crowd drowned all individual scents and he was forced to wait.

The barkeep reached their destination before Logan who had been forced to take a short detour around a large group of friends arguing loudly but lightheartedly over whose turn to pay it was. He had managed to keep his eye on the barkeep's greying hair and had seen where he had stopped to lay down the drinks. Logan changed his route and the barkeep waved his hand over the customers' heads at Logan pointing out the spot. Logan pushed through but stopped on his tracks when he saw her back. It was Grace. He would have known that curve of her back and hips from anywhere. She sat with her back directly towards him, turned away and talking to a man sitting on the barstool next to hers. She had a black oilcloth jacked on her, not the old faded air force blue he had seen her wearing on previous encounters. And the girl had been right, she was carrying a gun under her arm; Logan noticed instantly where the gun and the holster caused the jacket to bulge subtly.

_Grace. _

Logan hesitated for a moment longer, then advanced with determination and walked right over to her. She didn't notice him and he saw his hand sink its fingers into her hair and found himself leaning in to smell her almost black tresses. She smelled like she always did: of living earth, something musky and sweet. He let her hair fall down and his hand traveled down her neck, spine and her side before he managed to stop it on her hip preventing it from travelling down on her ass as he circled around her. He felt her back stiffen under his hand. An old pain shoot up his arm making the muscles between his shoulder plate and spine cramp up.

The young man with uncannily blue eyes glanced over at Logan recognising his presence before looking back at Grace questioningly. Logan did not see her reply but the young man got up without a word and with a look that made clear he'd be watching. The man walked past Logan who noted that the man was about his hight and with a musculature similar to his. He turned around to have another look but the man had already disappeared into the crowd.

Logan sat down on the vacant stool. Grace had turned her side towards him and was leaning her elbows against the bar with the glass in her hand. Logan picked up his and remained fully turned towards her. She paid no attention to him for awhile, not until Logan turned his head to scan the crowd as he took a swig.

'He's a Soldier. A pure-bred Soldier,' Logan heard her say. She too was looking through the crowd when he turned his eyes back to her. She turned again towards the bar without looking at him. 'That's why he looks so much like you. If you noticed.'

Logan took another swing that emptied the glass. 'Yeah, a spittin' image. Except for the eyes.' He put the glass down on the counter and signalled for the girl to refill it.

'The eyes are a new thing. They used to have eyes like yours in the auld lang syne but I changed that.'

The girl arrived with his personal bottle and poured a hefty measure in his glass. Logan too turned to sit with his face towards the bar. _You hate my eyes, don't you, darlin'?_ The thought kindled a sadness he had not expected. 'You're buildin' up an army?'

In the corner of his eye he saw Grace sip her drink. 'Nae, not as such. It's just him and a few others. There's a – a storm brewing and we need to be prepared.' Grace glanced over her shoulder as if to make sure the young man was still there though unseen. 'He has adamantium – on him too, you know.'

Logan was not sure what to make of the last remark. Was it to point out that others could take the bonding process but not him? Or that he was not the only one of his kind? Logan scratched the stubble under his jaw. _You fuckin' moron. He's her ace in her sleeve against you, you goddam nitwit. You, bub, have just met your match._ Logan drained the glass before the full realisation could hit him wholeheartedly and without mercy. _I ain't on her good books anymore. Don't think that you ever were, _he warner didn't smell any fear on her but he knew that what ever bond he had thought them to have between them was now gone (if it ever had been there in the first place). She had recognised him as her enemy, the source of her personal pain, and even if she was forced by the circumstances to look after him it didn't mean it had to be – nice.

_You had it commin', bub. And you deserve nothin' less._ What ever retribution she had in mind, in a direct or a roundabout way, he deserved it. Logan was more than half expecting that when the day came and whoever was hunting him would catch up with him, there would be a fatal oversight or outright blunder on her watch that would cost his life. _Nothin' wrong with that_, he thought while studying her features, _She deserves it and I would get my peace._

'I'm glad I found you here,' she said. She had turned to face him.

_Are you?_ Logan thought, _Bet you wouldn't be here if it was up to you._ 'What do you want?'

The bluntness seemed to make her back away a bit. 'I don't want –. I came to warn you, that's all.'

Logan flashed a grim smile of self-loathing at the row of bottles on the wall. 'Yeah, sure, a storm is comin'. And you came to tell me to buy a raincoat.' The sarcasm didn't ease the pain in his shoulders.

He heard Grace chuckle. 'They're going to rain on your parade, Logan, but I don't think you need waterproofs for this one. You just need to keep your eyes open.'

A wave of paranoia made Logan's neck tingle. 'Who is it?' he asked trying to sound uncaring.

'We're not sure. There has been an increase of – movement in the North American mutant community, so something is definitely going on but we're yet not sure what exactly.' She leaned her cheek on her palm and tilted her head towards him.

'So how do you know they're comin' for me?'

She didn't look into his eyes but somewhere about his brow. 'I have no idea how that could have anything to do with you, but Sattar – you remember him, the arab, right?' Logan grunted an affirmative. 'Sattar's saying that something is coming your way and we always take his word for it.' She looked over her shoulder towards the Soldier. Something in her demeanour betrayed the insecurity she tried to hide from Logan.

_I ain't gonna touch you again_, Logan thought more as pledge to himself than as a reassurance to her. 'I'll keep my eyes open.'

She looked at him and smiled. It seemed genuine to him. 'That's all I'm asking.' She sat up turning towards him. 'And we'll keep an eye on you. I – we want to catch those bastards too.'

Logan didn't know what to say so he drained his drink and stood up. 'I gotta get ready for the next round.' He meant to leave without another word but found himself standing in front of her. 'You gonna stick around and watch?' Her presence and the closeness of her body felt as warmth in him. He was about to step an inch closer when he sensed the Soldier standing right behind his left shoulder.

_Where the fuck did you come from?_

'I don't think so,' Grace answered but still smiling. 'I've seen enough price fighting to last me a lifetime. And we need to get going anyway.'

Logan felt a sting of disappointment he ignored almost as soon as he felt it.

'I think we ought to go, ma'am.' The Soldier's deep voice resonated in Logan's back irritating him; the fucker even sounded a bit like him. He wanted to bark out a dry-witted comment on the blu-eyed boy but failed to deliver. He focused on Grace again. He thought he understood why she would not want to see him fight.

'Yeah, well,' he said feeling uncomfortable, 'I guess you know how it'll turn out. Probably won't get my ass kicked.' He flashed his teeth in something that he intended as a friendly smile.

'I'm counting on that,' she replied sounding amused. Or as if they had in deed shared a private joke. Then she turned somber and met his eyes. 'You take care of yourself.'

Logan swallowed. 'Yeah, sure. Takes one of them to take me down,' he said giving the Soldier a nod. He stared at her for a while. 'You too, love. Watch your back.'

Grace blinked looking surprised.

_Sometimes she looks so small._

_That's me. I made her small. Back then. She didn't look small when I first saw her but I made sure she'd leave lookin' like nothin'._

Logan stepped forward ignoring the Soldier following him and cupped her chin and cheek in his right hand. Her muscles turned granite under his touch but he didn't mind. He brushed her lower lip with his thumb; he remembered doing something similar years ago, in the woods after she had found him, but to smudge her cheek with blood as a warning. _I'd take it all back if I could._ The Soldier put his hand on Logan's shoulder as a warning. Logan ignored the gesture and brushed her hair behind her ear with his left hand. He left the hand there, in her hair, on the back of her head. He smelled her cautiousness and a hint of fear.

_I'm sorry._

He pulled her closer to him and leaned in so that he could sunk his face in her hair. It felt soft on his face and he rubbed his sideburns against her head right behind her ear. The Soldier's fingers dug into his flesh putting pressure on certain nerves in his shoulder. A person less accustomed to pain would have been brought to his knees but Logan made sure he didn't even twitch.

'I'm sorry,' he whispered into her ear while holding her head gently. 'I did mean to hurt you but I could've chosen not to. I'm sorry but I can't take it back.' He pulled his face away from hers and stroked her hair but the words didn't have the effect he had hoped for. He let her go and stepped away. She looked bewildered, her hair slightly ruffled where he had nudged her. The Soldier loosened his grip but left his hand on Logan's shoulder. Logan knew the next time those fingers would leave his left arm useless. For awhile.

The Soldier paid no attention to the man he was holding. 'I think we'd better go now, ma'am. It's almost 1 a.m. and we have a long drive ahead.'

Grace remained silent, lost in her thoughts and staring at Logan. Logan accepted her scrutiny.

'Ma'am. We ought to go, ma'am.'

Grace nodded. 'Aye, we should.'

'I'd better get going too,' Logan said and turned pulling his shoulder free from the Soldier's grip while shooting his most menacing look at the blue-eyed man. 'Sure you're not stayin', bub? I could make sure there's your name besides mine on the roster.'

To his surprise a glint of amusement flashed in the man's eyes. 'Some other time, sir. I'm sure we can arrange something.'

Logan grinned. 'You just let me know where and when. I'll always have time for you.'

The Soldier laughed. 'It's a date then. We will figure out the details later, sir.'

Logan chuckled and walked away. He couldn't help liking the blue-eyes but he didn't let the banter mislead him into forgetting that he had been talking to a man manufactured especially for dispatching him. Friendly manners had nothing to do with it.

Logan almost took a look over his shoulder to see the two before the throng closed behind him. _He'll take care of her. And I have a match to win._

* * *

I watched Logan walk thought the mob of drunken punters on his way backstage. The crowd parted like the Red Sea in front of him. People, those that saw him coming, stepped quickly aside to clear room for him. Those who didn't, soon found themselves shoved aside by an indiscriminating bulk of a man who didn't seem to even notice he had run into someone. The cursing and the threats that followed him fell on dead ears. Though I'm sure nothing escaped him. He was playing the part of the badass thug, building up enough revulsion and animosity to challenge every ned that thought himself the top predator in this neck of the woods. But even more effectively he enticed the most dangerous primal reaction of them all: jealousy, the cousin of resentment and retribution as the eyes of the women he passed followed him. Some discreetly, others – not so much but all were looks of attraction and desire. I was sure he noticed those too just as I was sure he would take up some of the offers, like was every man that saw their women stare at him. Lust is a heartless bitch. It knocks down empires and turns hearts to ashes.

_Love._ What a strange thing to say to me. And the way he had rubbed his head against mine. Like a dog rubbing its head against its pack mate. It reminded me of the dream I had had ages ago. The one of the warhound. The one I had had before I had found him in the forest. Was this the barren sunburnt land from where he had come in that dream?

A shudder run through me.

Why hadn't I recognised him the moment I saw him lying unconscious on the forest floor? I could've left him lying there, let the hunger of his body finish him. Why had it taken me so long to remember him? How could I have forgotten him – of all the torturing bastards I have met in my life. He was one of the worst. For some twisted, fucked up reason, I had crossed roads with one of the worst I had ever met.

I followed his departing figure and felt the weight of sadness settle on me. It was strange: why thinking of him made me feel sad? Why not disgusted, enraged, terrified or self-pitying?

_Had been?_ Had he changed? Had he changed like I had assured him he had? Had he changed, somehow, over the years? Or because of the brain damage and the trauma? He looked exactly like he had back then with his sideburns and permanently ruffled hair that looked like he had ears of an animal. _Beastly, I suppose. The hound, no doubt about it. _

'Are you alright, ma'am?'

'Yeah,' I turned around towards Pete, 'He managed to ruffle my feathers but I'm fine.' I smiled at him in order to sooth his nerves.

Pete looked unconvinced but changed the subject anyway. 'So, he is one of us?'

I glanced over my shoulder but Logan had disappeared amongst the crowd. 'Genetically yes. Mostly at least. For the most part he is a Soldier but somebody has made modifications on the principal genome.'

'He certainly looks like one of us Soldiers.' Pete looked thoughtfully over the heads of the crowd behind my back. 'I can take him down, ma'am, in combat,' he said and locked eyes with me. 'I have an idea and I think I know what he has done to you,' he added quietly. 'I smelled some of the story on you two.'

I had forgot how extraordinary their sense of smell was. Even with Logan. It must be a completely different world for them.

'Don't.' It came out snappish. I closed my eyes and gathered my thoughts. 'Do not kill him unless you absolutely have to, is that clear?'

Pete squinted at me before replying. 'Yes, ma'am, not unless I absolutely have to.'

'Good.' I did realise Pete had produced an answer that in effect left the choice to him but I knew he would wait until it would become an absolute necessity. They all were men of their word. They were bred and raised to be that way.

Did that mean that Logan too was a man of his word? He had the DNA but not the education. Not that we knew. He just as well might had been brought up in the way that would have brought into existence the traits and possibilities hidden in his genome; you needed to have the right environment for the genetic traits to manifest themselves, otherwise they would become dormant for the generation. And every now and again some soldiers turned unpredictable and ferocious up to the point of being unmanageable despite of the best training possible.

And sometimes it was done to them on purpose to mould them into perfect instruments of terror. I have seen Soldiers like that in action. On our side and on other's. A world of pain was needed in creating them and a world of pain followed in their wake.

I combed my hair with my fingers to smooth out the ruffles left by his fingers. I stifled the desire to wipe my face with my cuff as well. 'Okay, let's go. He'll take care of himself and we'll leave a lookout to notify if anything does come his way.'

Pete grinned. 'That'll be interesting.'

I headed for the exit and Pete fell into pace with me extending his arm here and there to clear way for us. We got out and crossed the car park. I waited for Pete to unlock the doors but he leaned his elbow on the roof and studied the facade of the establishment we had exited.

'Come on, it's cold out here.' I had left my cap and mittens in the car and the wind was dragging the warmth out of me. 'Take a picture, Pete, it'll last you longer.'

'Hold on. Did you notice that girl in that green hooded thing there, ma'am, sitting in a corner table close to the exit and trying to be invisible?'

'Can't say I did.' I was sure Pete was right. 'Nothing escapes you, does it? What about her?'

Pete grinned at me. 'Not much.' He looked back at the entrance. 'I don't know. She is a mutant but – I don't know. Something peculiar about her scent.' He unlocked and opened the door. 'Probably nothing. She hasn't washed properly for awhile so it might be just that.'

'Don't tell me you can tell people's mutations by their scent?'

Pete laughed. 'Well, I can't. All I can tell is that she didn't have that usual mutation scent.'

We got into the car. I put the mittens on. 'Sometimes I'm happy I don't have your sense of smell, Pete.'

'But most of the time you wish you did, ma'am.' Pete started the car. 'You know, you always could ask Oji to do something about it the next time you need to spend time in the tank.'

I laughed. 'I'm quite happy with the model I have, thank you very much.'

Pete stopped at the junction and looked both ways before turning right and southwards. The bizarrely named small community of Laughlin City was soon left behind us. We drove on in silence.

Pete overtook a lorry. 'You could find out a lot, ma'am, if you had our sense of smell.'

'I know. And you're right, sometimes I do think about getting an upgrade.'

Pete didn't say anything for awhile but it was clear he had something on his mind. I was happy to wait; it was a long drive.

'Like I said, ma'am, I did figure out some of the history between you two, but –' he threw a quick side long glance at me, '– I think I have a better picture of the current situation than you do. With all due respect, ma'am.' I didn't respond and Pete shifted his weight. 'Something you can't tell without a sense of smell like mine, ma'am.'

I felt discomfited by his remark. It's damn unnerving to know for certain that the person next to you knows things about yourself that you don't. Things you might not even want to know. 'Is that right?'

Pete kept his eyes on the road. Miles passed. I took the mittens off and turned the heating down a bit.

'He was scared when he came down to see you, Grace,' Pete said eventually.

I turned to stare fixedly on the black wall of the boreal forest along the road as if I could see something out there.

'And I heard something too.'

Pete slowed down and stopped the car on a small lay-by when I didn't say anything. He left the engine running and turned towards me on his seat. 'I heard what he whispered to you. I don't know if he knew I could hear him – that easily – but if his senses are anything like mine he should have known. Maybe he just didn't realise,' Pete offered when I didn't respond.

'Your point being?'

Pete turned away again. 'What he said, he meant. That's all. He was being honest with you. He is genuinely sorry but I'm not sure if he actually really regrets what he did. Do you know what I mean by that?'

I swallowed. 'I'm not sure if I do.'

Pete put the gear on before elaborating: 'Grace, he is sorry. But I think he is sorry just because he did it to you.' Pete turned to check if the road was free. 'In some other case, I not so sure.' The road was empty and dark and he didn't take the trouble to switch on the indicator before returning to the road. 'I watched him fight the first rounds. He doesn't seem so but he is a damn shrewd combatant, not the berserker it seems on the surface. Every move he makes is calculated but he had to fight to keep himself from finishing off those guys. I noticed few times when he had to redirect a blow as he realised it would do far too much damage or be lethal on contact. And every time he managed to do so.' Pete paused to rub his eye. 'But it doesn't prove that he is lenient, just that he is a master of his craft. If he could he would have allowed every single one of those blows to land. So he's in control and ruthless and has a willingness to do harm. Not just readiness.'

I thought about what he had said. 'Is that what you feel in a fight?' I assumed he did. He was a Soldier.

Pete held his silence for awhile. 'Yeah, I do.' He sounded uncomfortable admitting it. 'I know it's not ethically justifiable but it is a – high, I suppose.' He didn't sound willing to talk about it so I didn't push the subject. He wasn't done yet, though. 'So I know how he feels. I have done things I wish I had't have to do because I recognise that on a personal level they are unfair and target an undeserving person. But I don't regret the deeds themselves. They're just things that I do, nothing more. Things that I'm good at. Like you're good at intuitive healing or reconnaissance and in –. It's just what I do well.'

I knew exactly what he meant. We all had done things over the course of history that had been necessary, the unavoidable evil, I reckon. You can't make an omelette without breaking the eggs and all that. A nice thought but not much of a comfort.

'So, you don't think he's changed?' I asked eventually.

Pete took his time to consider my question and I appreciated it. 'No, I don't think people in general can change. Not in their heart of hearts, no.'

My heart sunk. _It's just the way the world is, unfair._

In the corner of my eye I saw Pete glance at me before continuing: 'I believe that after a certain age our minds and personalities are set. Certain things become part of us for good and we can't shake them off anymore. No matter how hard we try. What we are at that point becomes what we will be for the rest of our lives.'

I knew he was right, in my heart of hearts. _Unfair, that's all._

I heard Pete draw a ragged breath. 'I love the combat and I love to battle. It's the reason I live for. It's a cliche to put it like this, I know, but it's the most alive I ever feel.' He swallowed. His voice was husky. 'It's always in my mind. Even when I'm not thinking about it and I have to be careful with it. It so easy to start to measure everything against it. And when that happens, Grace.' He drew another breath. 'I hope the day never comes, but I fear it will.' I closed my eyes. I knew it would come, eventually. Pete reached over and squeezed my hand in his. 'I'll need your help if – when the day comes, Grace.'

I closed his hand between mine. 'I'll be there, ready for you.'

Pete sighed leaving his hand between mine for a long while.

'Logan hasn't changed, ma'am,' Pete said after he had withdrawn his hand. 'The beast will always be there. Like it is in me. In all of us, for that matter.' I wasn't sure if he meant the Soldiers or people in general. 'The man that tortured you will always exists, somewhere, deep in him. Take my word for it. It takes one to know one.'

'You have never harmed me,' I protested.

Pete laughed ghoulishly. 'Not you but –. Let's just say that I'm not unfamiliar with the concept and leave it at that, okay?'

_Grace, you big sumph._ 'Sure. But you're a good man, Pete,' I added.

'No, I'm not. Nor is he.' Pete remained quiet for a while. 'But he tries to be something else than what he knows he is. He's trying fucking hard to be something he's not. And it'll backfire on him.'

I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. 'I know. Wake me up in an hour or so and we'll switch.'

'Sure thing. Mind if I turn on the radio?'

I smiled and shook my head.

* * *

The fights went well, Logan thought. Except for the very last one which the ringmaster had announced unexpectedly. The old man sometimes did that when he thought that there was still money to be made on the displeased, blood thirsty crowd that wanted to see their heroes avenged and the beast known as the Wolverine spitting out his own teeth for a change. Logan didn't mind. Nothing much to it. Take a few hits, let them think that they're close to making him bite the dust, and then turn the game around. Not too soon though. Logan thought that he might have taken the surprise contender down too soon. The guy had been dealing tougher punches than what Logan had expected, hard enough to knock the wind out of the mighty Wolverine when Logan had had his back turned. Stupid mistake, but he had made the fucker pay.

To be perfectly honest, Logan had been slightly off his game and he knew it. Grace had thrown him off balance (she seemed to have a knack for that). Her appearance had made him – careless. He had let the rage in him rise too close to the surface. Logan let out a growling sigh. A mistake for an amateur. She had been on his mind throughout the second rounds. At first he had just wondered about her reappearance out of the thin air. What was this 'storm' she had warned him about? Should he let it, or her, to have a say in his plans (as if he had any)? He had thought about the gun. He hadn't though she was the type to carry a sidearm, but what the hell did he know. It wasn't like he had known her that long, just had fucked her once and even then it had been her own –.

_Wrong._ _Fuckin' is all you've ever done to her. That's why you think you know her, but you're wrong. Fuckin' bastard, you only know how it feels to be inside her._

A wrong thought to have in the middle of a fight night. It had made him think about the cell and her in the wrong way. He had thought about how it had felt to have another person (_her_ to be precise) under his control to do as he pleased. After that he had begun to have flashbacks, first as he watched the other prizefighters beat their opponents. Then during his own fights which was not so much a distraction but a temptation for his rage; It had made him hit too hard a few times.

Then, when what he thought had been the last fight had been over, he had been unable to maintain the curbs on the memories, and suddenly he had been walking through the door to the cell. Grace had been there, lying on the floor, on her back, black and blue from bruises he recognised as his handiwork. He downed a glass of whiskey but it didn't help to drain the memory, it just made it more intoxicating. He remembered how he used to walk over to her and stare down at her (he saw his own reflection in her eyes). A wave of lust caught him and he didn't hear the ringmaster announce the one last contestant, their saviour. And he didn't see the first blow coming.

It was time to quit and he had told so to the ringmaster. The old man had not been particularly pleased about it, but he too knew that they had taken it as far as it could go without blowing the cover on Logan's talent, as the old man called it.

Grace had talked about talents.

They had agreed on a break. Logan might return in a year or two, if he wanted to. He had promised the old man he would seriously consider it when the time came. Logan had warned that he probably would not return but the old man had been less pessimistic.

'You're the best fighter I've ever seen and it's in you, son. The fight is in you. You'll be back.'

Logan had smiled and said that that was precisely why he had to go. That it had been a good run, lot's of fun, and the old man had known exactly what he meant by that. So they had shaken hands and Logan had received his winnings for the night. All in all he had enough to last him what was left of the winter. He would take it easy for a while, he would put his feet up, hunt some and just drive around the north. Something else would turn up by the summer.

Logan took his gear to the camper van and returned inside for one or two last beers before leaving for the dive for good. The shoulder was giving him trouble and when he reached with his hand to massage it, his fingers found the scar on his neck. It occurred to him that he could cut off the skin where the scar was. He entertained the thought for awhile. He could do that. The pain would not be that bad, not in comparison to the total amount of pain he had suffered. And it would perhaps distract his body. He had turned down all offers of sex the night had earned him, and he hadn't been nice about. He had pretended that they, the women that came for him, were not even there looking straight through them and walking past them with deaf ears. That had not gone down well with the ladies, and to be honest, he would not have minded some sexual gratification after the fights. Memories about the cell had given him an itch he badly wanted to scratch, but because it was the cell he had been thinking about he didn't dare to give in to the temptation. He was pretty sure how that would turn out, and by morning there would have been yet another broken figure with his handiwork all over her.

A mistake he would not repeat.

And the scar would stay on as the reminder he badly needed.

Logan walked over to the bar and sat down at the end. The TV was on and the talking heads of the late night, or the not quite the early morning yet -news babbled about the current economy as the numbers of the stock exchange run by at the bottom of the screen. A lot of red there. Apparently things were not going well. Logan smiled wryly. When exactly had things gone well?

He paid for the bottle and the barkeep didn't object. The dive was practically empty. The old man was counting his money with his wife in one table; few customers were sleeping where they had fallen. The quiet made the dive feel almost comfortable after the maddening chaos of a fight night. Logan felt himself relaxing. The tension left behind by the fighting begun to evaporated from his systems. He was happy to leave these circles behind. All the hassle surrounding the fighting had begun to have its toll on him. He was happy to be done with it.

_Little peace and quiet, that's all I need._

He noticed the girl sitting at the bar when he took his first gulp from the ice cold bottle. She was trying hard not to ogle him. Logan let his eyes run down her figure. A strange creature to be found in a place like this. Young, not even eighteen yet, he thought. Good looking figure but dressed in a dark green hooded coat that seemed a bit too thin considering the weather outside. And clearly interested in him though not that experienced in the matters of lust: every time he caught her eyeing him, she quickly turned her head away in embarrassment and stared at anything but him. It made Logan smile. A kind of a sweet thing, to be honest. He considered paying the girl a compliment but did not. He didn't want to give her any ideas. Tonight was not the night, and he didn't usually go for girls that young. Not that they could do better, they just needed to have their hearts broken by somebody of their age. They didn't know how to play the game yet and Logan didn't want to be their introduction to it.

_Go find your love from some where else, darlin'_, he thought. _What ever you're lookin' for, it ain't here._

Meeting Grace again had changed something. He thought how she had smelled when he had come up to her from the behind, and the scent of her hair; her cheek on her palm. The world had turned without him noticing, a new leaf and all that shit. He looked at the girl again but now saw only a sad little creature swimming in strange waters with bigger, crueler fish than she had known to exist.

_Not your problem,_ he reminded himself. _Mind your own business and let her figure it out by herself. You just walk away – Wolverine. You fight your own battles, nobody else's._

_Wish you make it through, little girl. World's a big pile of shit and full of men like me._

* * *

**A word from the author:**

Thanks for sticking it out with us so far! Really appreciate it. This ain't a canon story as you might have noticed, and I have rewritten the universe(s) quite a bit. And it ain't over yet. This is just the end of the second part. Here my story catches up with the the X1, as you saw, and my next chapters will deal with the events seen in the films – but without being necessarily faithful to them. This being my non-canon universe and all that. (And the big W wants to shed a little more blood than what we see in the films. Who am I to deny him?) However, I will not retell the complete films in my story, only those scenes that I need to rewrite (or I might just refer to them in my story). So refresh your memories. What a great reason for watching the X1 again, don't you think? So, be warned: things will not go as you might expect._  
_

Yours, ButNothing (+the cast)


End file.
